[DOCUMENTARY] I hope psychiatric treatment in the US has improved since the 80s

Experimental Philosophers should be dismissive of armchair methods

It is interesting to see how experimental philosophers does not want to distance themselves fundamentally from the traditional ways of doing things in philosophy. Some feel the necessity to point out that not all experimental philosophy is negative, that there are some positive projects going on. And yes, that is very probably the case, but would it have mattered? Why not just come out of the closet and say it - conceptual analysis is a junk practice.

   To stay lenient on the tradtition has advantages. It retains the possibility of inheriting the institutional benefits that are being enjoyed by analytical philosophers today, with chairs already being created specifically for experimental philosophers. When we have so many criticisms that hits right at the core of analytical philosophy, to do some name dropping, Rorty, Derrida, later Wittgenstein, why not join this crowd rather than try to appease the group of people that your work is (implicitly or explicitly) aimed against? Family resemblance and nominalism is much closer to x-phi than essentialism is. 

    No, instead we are stuck with traditional philosophers assuming that they are safe when adopting some naive form of the expertise argument, and can comfortably wave off the developments in x-phi. The (to my mind pathetic) discussion of who has the burden of proof to show that philosopher are/aren´t experts: lets be honest, even if it was conclusivly shown that the burden of proof is on the armchair philosopher, there is no chance he or she would go out and do the actual experiments. That is tantamount to the concession that their own methods are inferior, at least in that respect.

     I think x-phiers should read more of Richard Rorty, and try to align themselves with his metaphilosophy. The historicism and sociology that Rorty advocated seems to fit nicely together with the methods of x-phiers, and the lack of grandiouse claims of having found the essense of something goes even better with a Rortian outlook. The demarcation of groups, such as "cultural, socioeconomical, gender", is also in line with what Rorty thought was the case: we justify our claims to a group of people that are sufficiently like us in the relevant respect. Thus, when we are warranted to assert that we know something in one cultural or socioeconomical context may differ from when we are warranted to assert it in another, without giving up on concistency. 

     Again, I am tempted to give a sociological explanation of why x-phiers are trying to not upset the beast that is the analytical tradition. For careerist, instituitional, and social reasons. Yet I am never completly happy with ascribing people motives and intentions that they are not explicitly committed to. I perfer people who have the guts to burn some bridges for their convictions, rather than try keeping as many patched up bridges as possible up at the same time. We need to turn the tables on Williamson, who claims that the metaphysical realist work of Kripke and others have made dismissing essentialism  anachronistc (absurd to many, I know), but that he got away with this claim should bother us.

Freedom of Speech is overrated

There are no eternal laws out there that we can find to construe society and legislation around. When I was younger I was convinced that unrestrained free speech, shounting fire in theatres and the like, was a god given principle that the race of men ought to uphold at any cost. Although freedom of speech is essential, the legeslative aspects of it are overrated. What people are afraid of, those who want to express radical thought, is not primarily some prison time or slap on the wrist, it is the subsequent ostracization that often follows the expression of radical thought. It is the cultural and sociaital pressure to think alike, to form a cohesive whole in which divergence is seen as treason. If people know I am a racist, then free men and women can deny me work, or avoid me and so on. We are, in fact, very limited in practice when it comes to the free expression of thought, but these constraints are invisible to us, because to us they are the boundaries at which people become insane, unfit for society, and so on. We are grown into a way of being and thinking that respects a set of constraints that we do not directly percieve.

     Although free speech in legislation is a good thing, and one that we should hold dear, it is only a very limitied aspect of the broader notion of free thought and speech. We get worked into communities and are expected to behave, think and act in certain ways. When people say "free speech" they think of something concrete, the act of expressing a thought, but the processes through which any thought is expressed is deeply ingrained with the culture and society that rules on what strings of words are fit to exit ones mouth and when. The very limited cases when this process fails, as with rabid racists, we prohibit their unwanted behaviour through legislation such as "hate crime" laws.

      Anonymity in the internet age has perserved a forum for opinions that are not attatched to a certain known person, people can say what they like without their name being associated with their words. This is precisley the sort of freedom that escapes the cultural and societal pressures that often governs speech and writing, and it is valuable for that sake. Even controversial biologists, physicists, philosophers, benefit greatly from the possibility of expressing radical views while being anonymous. They will not express radical views as long as it hurts their careers, damages social relations, and upsets authorities in their own field.

      The contemporary rage from goverments over internet trolls that "hide behind anonymity" is a fear that is equivalent to that of the Church when they prosecuted people for un-religious thought. They want to drag people out into the light of the moral majority, they want us to play their game and be judged by their rules, but it is the rules that radical thought is questioning, and hence we cannot be asked to play a game that is already rigged against us. Radical thought is suppose to undermine large parts of our web of beliefs, and those parts under question can not be assumed to be true at the outset, then new ideas will be dismissed simply because of dogma.

        We enter into the oligarchs paradise as soon as every internet user is identifable with a physical person. Now adds will be more efficient, the goverment will together with buisness have large oversight over any thought that occurs anywhere in the world, and who is thinking what. Westerners today are too full of themselves to think that there wont come a time when their own thought needs protection, we have let govements run rampant over the internet and annonymity. This suggests that people think that it is suffiecent to protect free speech by simply having an amendment to a constitution, yet this is not sufficient to protect and care for free and radical thought. 

Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Seth MacFarlane, "Cosmos"

I am about to watch the fifth episode of the new series "cosmos", the first version being narrated by Carl Sagan from 1980. This re-release has all the cultural battles packed into it, the animated depiction of a scientist under the boot of dogmatic religion, the story of science being told in a literary way rather than in cold hard facts. Telling the story of science as a narrative, a contunuing journey, rather than flashing complex equations is a move form the scientistic side that slightly shocked me. They want a story that can be understood by the people they want to convince, a story on par with their current religious beliefs. Although this move displays some awareness of how to persuade people, it does not ultimatley succeed due to the antagonistic role that religion gets to play against the protaganist "science". Of course, the scientific view of the world is far more justified and in that sense is not on par with religous belief.

Other than that, and to the content matter, I think there are too many of these space documentaries now. If you have seen five of them, you have seen them all. The same metaphors, the same phenomena that is suppose to inspire us with "awe" is presented in pretty much the same way. Tyson is arguably the best presenter of matters relating to the cosmos, and beats these other guys by a long shot, both in style of narration, choice of metaphors, and cheer enthusiasm for the subject matter.

The very vivid animations I assume was the creatation of Seth MacFarlane, who also created the famous TV shows "Family Guy" and "American Dad". It is interesting how many bad taste-jew jokes MacFarlanes has gotten away with, it is even more amazing that he got away with this religion-bashing on Fox. Perhaps Murdoch and Roger Ailes have grown soft and liberal, I doubt it though.

Out and over

Discouraged youth

Elisabeth Warren and the fate of America

There is only one hope for America as I currently see the situation, and that is the very intelligent senator for Massachusetts, Elistabeth Warren. Former Professor with a focus on consumer protection, this honst and strong women is precisly what America needs. There are no other people in my mind that would represent the American people, Hilary Clintons unsatisfied desire for power probably cause her to be even more promiscuous toward the demand of the private interests, one million dollars in adds here or there, two votes for a bill there, an even trade.

As a non-American I am absolutley flabergasted that someone like Chris Christie can be so obviously guilty of abusing poltitical power and still be a condender for the position of president. This would never have happend where I come from, it is a sign that people just dont care anymore. The problem is that the influence of American politics extend far beyond its geographical and demographical boarders, to its allys primarily, and to its enemies as well. That there are serious politicians with such disregard for the democratic process is disgusting, we need a new witch hunt on these people. We need to show them that even if the media still accepts them, the people dont. We need to hunt down their contributers and their puppets, one of them being Christie, and tell them that if they try to put their greasy capitalist fingers into the demoractic political process once more we will cut off their hands. The people have the ultimate power, money can buy guns, but it cant buy people to carry those guns if those people care more about their country than their own short term finanical well being. 

I wish you all luck in solving your problems America, and if Senator Warren runs for president I will start raising funds in Europe for her campagin as this is in the interest not only of America, not only Europe, but the whole world.

About This Blog

This blog is intended to be my absent analyst, the pouring out of my concerns out into cyberspace so that you may waste your time reading what I have to say. There is nothing that is not a waste of time! So why not waste your time  here.

I am a person schooled for four years in analytical philosophy, my mad suggestions will range from peculiar topics in philosophy to things of public interest. Please note that a hard-to-detect sarcasm may be at work in some of what I write, I embody differnet personas and perspective as I write, I dont settle in for any of them however. Aristotle supposedly said that it is the sign of an intellegent person that she can entertain a proposition without believing it, that is an attitude I partly take to the extreme. Running toughts to their logical end point is always amusing, as it mostly leads to absurdities, but that does not mean that I believe it all. I write for very possible and actual people out there, I represent their wishes and concerns. I hope I will not be judged too harshly, as my intentions are good. 

The brightest person the last hundred years, and my by-far favorite author, Richard Rorty said that ironists (which I take myself to be) are always uncomfortable in their final vocabulary, they cannot help but to feel a certain rootlessness, a lack of solid ground to stand on. What I do is visit the ground of others who are more confident, run their thoughts to their logical end, and go somewhere else.