"We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer." - Ludwig Wittgenstein, TLP 6.52.
I'm really curious of the justification claim that the person who gets the job has 10 coins in his pocket. If my justification is because I have good evidence to believe John has 10 coins in his pocket and I have good intel that he will get the job. Then how do I have justification that the person will have 10 coins in his pocket if someone else gets hired?
"See, there are conditions for the possibility of all of us being who we are and doing what we do, and sometimes they're as bloody and ordinary as economics". Bars
The key to understanding and even going beyond Tomasello is the notion of primary empathy, with which we are born. We virtually identify with our significant other (usually our mother from whose womb we have just emerged). We don't have to learn of the other's consciousness: we have to learn of our distinctness. We don't need a "theory of mind" to conceive of other minds, for we are born identifying with another's mind. It takes learning, exploration, & experimentation to learn of our own identity.
In his later works, Tomasello went beyond joint intentionality to "collective intentionality", which has a moral component. I'm not sure if this works. (And surely you know Langer is getting the information you cite on signal vs symbol right from Cassirer?)
Some misunderstanding of Tomasello. Joint intentionality is a shared focus and to some extent cultural consciousness, but he does not say this ability is "innate", though *primary empathy* may lead to it. Primary empathy (which, by the way, does away with the need for "mind-reading" or "theory of mind") probably comes with development in the womb and being born as a dependent.
Mostly with Tomasello, but better: Philippe Rochat (2009). *Others in Mind: Social origins of self-consciousness*. Cambridge University Press. Emphasis on the creativity of language: Charles C. Taylor (2017). *The Language Animal: The full shape of the human linguistic capacity*. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Both anti-Chomsky.
10:12 maybe the kind of intelligence they have in DC and Chicago is not the kind of intelligence the benevolent ETs are interested in conversing with No one ever considers that
Gotta love “Hai-degger” and “moh-derna-tee.” Just discovered this guy, big fan. Reminds me of home (TN), though I think his accent is from a different state. It’s hilarious because you expect a Baptist sermon from that accent, and then you realize you’re not in church.
I'm just a "regular guy", and I think there is a neo platonic resurgence on the horizon. Maybe I'm wrong but I describe it as a "non religious Hellenistic spiritual path". I think that having an experience of transcendental Beauty helps one be more open to the words of Plotinus. I found neo Platonism after searching for something that might explain an ineffable encounter I had with that "Beauty". I was a staunch materialist at the time and the way that Plotinus and Plato approach the transcendent allowed me to find ways to grok that experience without feeling "weird" about delving into the world religion or new age.
The great Peter Green, after he had his unfortunate experience with LSD and while he was recovering from a bout of mental illness from that experience, reportedly said that although he could still play, he could (as a way of trying to explain what he had lost) no longer play the notes "between the lines." Not that I am anywhere near the same league, but as a bass player, I understood what that meant. When I felt I had become a good bass player (early 80s, began playing in late 60s), my best lines happened when I stopped thinking about what I was playing. The magic happens when you just let yourself go and see what happens. Unfortunately, Greeny was no longer able to do that, and it only happens to me, anymore, on those rare occasions when I have been practicing a lot and am on top of my game, as it were. So I totally get what Bruce Thomas means when he says he plays it and then figures out what he played. I think the best playing, on any instrument, comes when you can shut off your conscious mind and let the music play your fingers, rather than the other way around, if that makes any sense. Trying to explain music is like trying to dance to architecture, as I believe Frank Zappa (and no doubt others) said.
22:22 - Foucault's Whole New Disciplinary Matrix Around Madness: "I've joked about this process - I don't want to use the strong word “madness” here - but when we look at the expansion of this therapeutic zone on into the late 20th century, we now find out that very few of us don't belong in it. I mean, if you're not on a 12-step program today, you're out of fashion; I mean, who would have guessed, that the discourse of madness would eventually cover the whole social field and, until, perhaps the last growth industry we have - other than making movies about sex and violence - is psychiatry, and in running 12-step programs? This is a growth industry." Who would have guessed? Thomas Szasz, in his book The Myth of Mental Illness, published in 1961. It wasn't a guess, either.
Love your podcast. But one thing that would be really helpful is to first hear about where your personal sympathies lie in terms of, among the hundreds of philosophical ideas and thinkers you have read, which ones you agree with the most. Not the hosts as a group but individually. You can get the sense of this as you listen to many episodes but it's still not very clear. This would help the listener frame your discussion and actually help in better understanding the topic in question. If there is a previous episode or something that you have released that serves this purpose then please point me to it as i haven't seen it yet. Thank you, you guys are awesome.
Your comments on country music shocked me. You say you played Bob Willis and that it was "square" Nashville cats were some of the hippest musicians anywhere. You can't judge a genre by the mediocre. Every genre is largely mediiocre because unfortunately most of us humans are mediocre and shallow, but country has some of the best musicians. Also those guys could keep people dancing as well as cryin and laughing. Funny the black guy has the best take and country the whites are ignorant. Politics?
I am re-watching this series once a year at minimum. Always with a new thought. Now I see how Neuromancer is a delicious paradox. Poet wrote about the highly instrumental future. This is why Neuromancer will always be a special book. There is no school to teach you how to write Gibson :)
