The Philosophy Discussion Forum

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 11:10 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 10:13 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 9:08 pm ...the chances of you having something published are slim. The likelihood that it could appear in a journal I might read are between nil and not much.

Well, congratulations if you have had something published; even more so if it is in something I might read, but after 13 years of interaction, I know enough about your style to say without fear of contradiction that I haven't read anything you have written other than in this forum.

Again, .

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 12:59 am And I'm a philosopher, of minor note.

That is f****** hilarious.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 12:59 am And I'm a philosopher, of minor note.

Neither am I.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 2:47 pm It depends on what you suppose "philosophy" means. Does it mean mere speculation? Anybody can do that. But does it mean the pursuit of wisdom? That's harder to do, and fewer do it. Does it mean the pursuit of truth? Well, then few there are, indeed, who do it.

My view is that the philosophy of today, and what I perceive and understand of those who identify as “philosophers” on this forum, operate in a manner similar to a medical specialist and may be quite adept in a given area but do not have, and have no way even to conceive of, a “holistic frame” or an integrated picture.

I also have noted, though it might not be fair to use this as an example, that some “philosophers” — my example is Flash who might be representative of a “philosophical class” and a product of the Postwar — have and operate in and through an ‘acidic mentality’. I really do not know how to describe what I sense in fair terms (because I do not understand this frame-of-mind), but it is a mentality oriented toward breaking-apart and lacks a synthesizing tendency. I do not think it is interested in pulling together an integrating picture, and in this sense dedicates itself merely to “pulling apart”. It is like one aspect of the self gets hold of a mental tool with a powerful function, but the will operating this tool is (my interpretation obviously) perverse. It’s like “philosophical mean-spiritedness”.

[Pervert, perverse: from Old French pervertir, from Latin pervertere to turn the wrong way, from per- (indicating deviation) + vertere to turn]

I focus on this only because this is one of the major things I belive I have learned personally through participation here. If a “school of philosophy” is represented here, and a “philosophical focus”, it is overall fairly mindless and even destructive. As I often say the result is unpleasant, ever-continuous “bickering”. However, I do recognize that in the wider world the social and allow me to say spiritual glue that binds people in a cohesive society is obviously dissolving, and if people find anything it is that they simpky cannot agree and refuse to work together.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 12:01 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 12:59 am And I'm a philosopher, of minor note.

That is f****** hilarious.

This is a perfect example of what I am pointing out. And it is worthwhile — philosophically of course — to examine the motivating animus. The object? To find some element that can be attacked, and then to go after it to the exclusion of all other modalities and choices, because something must be proven, and the opponent must be defeated. And that defeat celebrated.

If someone asked me, I would answer that in the long run the general philosophical attitude of IC is on a higher level than that of Flash. Again, I must acknowledge that I am here, in a way, working an angle of argumentation that involves the “ad hominem”. In my view it is not about pure argument of principles with no relationship to men, but in truth a balance between “orienting concepts” and the psychology of men in a given social configuration.

What is this resistance to seeing and discussing the orientation of specific men in specific contexts? For example, what motivated Flash to become involved in philosophy? And similarly the same can be asked of IC (who certainly has decades of background in philosophical studies) as it can be asked of anyone writing here.

The personal pursuit of “wisdom” is in the end, and for an individual man, tremendously more relevant on all levels when compared to some “pose” of a disturbed, angry, destructive individual. It doesn’t have to be this way for anyone else certainly, but for me the real stakes have ultimately to do with genuine values, not argumentative finesse.

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 7:54 pm Do you SERIOUSLY expect us to believe that before 2000 years ago there were no people seeking truth? Before 4000 years ago? It is one thing for you to claim that it wasn't possible to find/discover truth. That prior to knowledge of (your) God any search for truth would be unsuccessful. But do you REALLY want to add that qualification? That seeking without successful finding is not seeking?

The purpose of the pursuit of philosophy, the orientation of the [ancient] philosopher, was to think about, become aware of and to speak about, and overarching or total perspective on life, a man’s duty, the purpose of his life, and his activities and contributions to the world and in society.

So certainly truth was sought. But can you, Mike Novack, declare that such is your object and motivation? For all I know perhaps you DO see yourself in that light, but if I had to go on intuition I would have to say your orientation is different. But you see: many people participate in forums and in social media environment, myself included, but a good question is: What really are they up to? What really is the object? And what, finally, is achieved?

That prior to knowledge of (your) God any search for truth would be unsuccessful.

As I have written (expressing my own conclusions) our world of the Occident begins when Christian-oriented religionists encountered the Greek philosophical schools. Our entire cultural outlook and focus arises out of that. The Greco-Christian focus is unlike anything that I have encountered in my examination of different schools of thought (and my own interest is in the study of philosophical and religious schools of ancient India mostly). In a very real sense (this is my view) one has to recognize the superiority of some element at the root of our own traditions. How to define that? It is a delicate pursuit.

So to be fair and also realistic you cannot, and no one can successfully, deny or revoke nor denigrate that which is, in reality, the very basis of everything we are doing here.

That seeking without successful finding is not seeking?

That is an interesting sentence. There are many things that could be said as response. But what if there is a mental orientation that actually has no intention of ‘finding’ or ‘settling’ questions, but which purpose is actually “not finding”?

That also is an interesting question, I think.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2026 7:50 pm Do you believe the word of Hashem in Torah? Or would you say that wild guessing is a better option? For if that Supreme Intelligence has not spoken, and never revealed anything about Himself, and, as you suggest, has not even left us any clues in nature, then what can any such scenario be but a wild guess? Upon what are we basing any knowledge?

My view is that what “speaks” to man is an entity (if I can put it this way) of many facets. As I have pointed out Indian metaphysics can be and have been for me if great value in clarifying Christian metaphysics. But I am not, and indeed I cannot be, a religious literalist or a Biblical literalist.

The term Hashem only has relevance in a Orthodox Jewish context, because it is forbidden to attempt to utter the name of God. It reminds me too much of hashbrowns. I regard traditional Jewish Orthodoxy as outmoded. And as you know I follow a supersessionist line. I respect that you do not. Torah reminds me of Tora-Bora. I am I confess tired of even hearing these terms.

But on a serious note I do regard the Hebrew-Christian revelation, in combination with the Greek philosophical orientation, and its “Alexandrian” synthesis, as having crucial relevance.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 11:22 am If someone asked me, I would answer that in the long run the general philosophical attitude of IC is on a higher level than that of Flash.

That's because you know nothing of philosophy and are too stupid to ask those who do for help. Anybody who does could read the post I shall quote below and know that IC is terrible at the subject, then they can check whether he has the imagination to even wonder if he has misunderstood anything, and then thy realise that he is unfixably bad at it.

The fact that you cannot read the below post and determine this same thing is merely evidence that you, like mister Can, have never heard of Frege. Which is a shame for you, Frege, in spite of being a genius was the most horrible proto-nazi, you would like him.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 23, 2023 4:45 pm Something new for Peter Holmes.

For those of us who read PN the magazine, there's an interesting article by Justin Bartlett, on "The Cognitive Gap." It is an overview of moral cognitivism and non-cognitivism -- Peter Holmes' view fitting into the latter category.

For moral non-cognitivists, those who believe moral language only signals emotive states or subjective states of approval/disapproval and refer to no objective properties, Bartlett proposes a dilemma called "the Frege-Geach Problem." (See iss.156, p.9) In a nutshell, the problem is what happens when one tries to put a non-cognitivist kind of meaning into a moral claim. The example he uses is as follows.

P1: Killing is wrong.
P2: If killing is wrong, then getting your little brother to kill is wrong.
C: Therefore, getting your little brother to kill is wrong.

This version is the cognitivist version, and while it is logically sound, in that IF the first two premises were true, then the conclusion would necessarily follow. But Peter Holmes would have to argue that P1 or P2 are not objective claims, but rather only emotive ones, subjective claims.

The Frege-Geach problem appears, though, when we try to follow Peter Holmes's likely advice on that. What we get is a syllogism as follows:

P1: Boo to killing.
P2: If 'Boo to killing,' then getting your little brother to kill is wrong.
C: Therefore, getting your little brother to kill is wrong.

Now we can see that it's become rather comical. What can "Boo to killing" (or "I don't like killing," or "My society doesn't like killing") be adding, that would ever warrant the extension "it's also wrong"?

Now, an alert Peter might point out, in response to this, that we have not been fair in our second syllogism. The problem is not the "Boo to killing" part, which is as fair a summary of moral subjectivism as one can get, but rather the use of the term "wrong" as objective. Such an objector might say, "You can't render an cognitivist or moral objectivist term as a summary of the view of a subjectivist.

And I would concede that objection.

But now, look at what happens to the syllogism is we grant the objection:

P1: Boo to killing.
P2: If 'Boo to killing,' then getting your little brother to kill is boo.
C: Therefore, getting your little brother to kill is boo.

Now, the situation is immeasuably worse for the non-cognitivist. For now, not only is the syllogism redundant and circular (saying essentially no more than, "That which is boo is boo"), but it is also not communicating anything that resembles what we think of as a moral claim at all.

If we leave it there, then Peter Holmes would have to go all the way, and say there's no way to say that killing (or pedophilia, or slavery, or rape...pick your moral issue) is wrong. And "boo" has absolutely no moral force...it's merely descriptive of an individual's current state of feeling. It totally lacks any element of duty, of "oughtness" or of the rightness of a claim. It's pure emotion, from beginning to end...nothing more.

The upshot, then, is that Holmes's view, far from saving moral language or allowing us to say something meaningful about right and wrong in the absence of objective referents, is going to stultify utterly any moral talk at all. And unless one believes society can function with absolutely NO moral direction, one is going to have to pose the question to Peter, "What do you want us to do, in order to describe human moral experience, and how do you anticipate society can survive on your total prohibition on objective moral belief?"

The ball, I think, is in Peter Holmes's court. But maybe he has a response.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 11:03 amMy view is that the philosophy of today, and what I perceive and understand of those who identify as “philosophers” on this forum...

Take a look at who actually call themselves philosophers on this forum. They are the ones you can be quite certain have never been within a mile of a serious philosophy department.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 11:03 am...operate in a manner similar to a medical specialist and may be quite adept in a given area...

It is true that as you advance through the academic world, your focus becomes increasingly esoteric. It is also true, more generally, that people have their own interests so, yeah, most people are better informed in some areas than others.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 11:03 am...but do not have, and have no way even to conceive of, a “holistic frame” or an integrated picture.

What do you think an integrated picture entails?

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 10:55 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 10:13 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 9:08 pm ...the chances of you having something published are slim. The likelihood that it could appear in a journal I might read are between nil and not much.

Will, you are confusing the first with the second.

No I'm not.

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Mon Sep 14, 2026 10:55 pmI agree, unlikely you would read a journal (regularly read) in which IC might be published. But have you never seen such magazines/journals as might have a religious focus along the lines of what IC's religious views appear to be? They do exist.

I'm sure they do, but even they must have standards.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 12:14 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2026 7:50 pm Do you believe the word of Hashem in Torah? Or would you say that wild guessing is a better option? For if that Supreme Intelligence has not spoken, and never revealed anything about Himself, and, as you suggest, has not even left us any clues in nature, then what can any such scenario be but a wild guess? Upon what are we basing any knowledge?

My view is that what “speaks” to man is an entity (if I can put it this way) of many facets.

Interesting. I guess there are two questions that arise out of that, in my thinking. One would be how we would know such a thing...is it a voice in one's head? Is it something else? I'd be interested in knowing what your view of the "channel" is. The second question would be, what's your assurance that, if such a "voice" or "insight" comes to you, that it's beneficent, not malevolent? How would one judge that?

Any thoughts?

As I have pointed out Indian metaphysics can be and have been for me if great value in clarifying Christian metaphysics. But I am not, and indeed I cannot be, a religious literalist or a Biblical literalist.

I understand that's your present position. I'm assuming it.

The term Hashem only has relevance in a Orthodox Jewish context, because it is forbidden to attempt to utter the name of God. It reminds me too much of hashbrowns. I regard traditional Jewish Orthodoxy as outmoded. And as you know I follow a supersessionist line. I respect that you do not. Torah reminds me of Tora-Bora. I am I confess tired of even hearing these terms.

You're right: I know that HaShem means "the Name," and is a placeholder for YHWH, the name forbidden to Orthodox Jews. I use it out of deference to your heritage, because Christians don't just regard God as a "name," (and yes, I know that also stands for "reputation" and "glory," among other things, not just "name," so I'm not trivializing it) but know Him as a Father. He's not just "a god" to us, or even "the Name." He's "Abba," the one who loves us, and the one we know. Consequently, we feel that to remain at such a distance would actually be disrespectful of the place of relationship He has designated for us, and would evince, on our part, a lack of success in His doing so. We know Him as Father and as Lord. So we try to speak that way, short of offending others who may not appreciate the meaning of those terms of familiarity and commitment. We don't intend disrespect.

But on a serious note I do regard the Hebrew-Christian revelation, in combination with the Greek philosophical orientation, and its “Alexandrian” synthesis, as having crucial relevance.

Yes, I remember. But it seems to me I also remember that you see the relevance as primarily at the civilizational level, rather than as the personal, devotional or relational level. Yet I submit to your consideration that the civilizational benefits are a product of the personal, devotional and relational ones.

That is to say, the more who actually believe in that revelation, and actually live by that revelation, the more civilizational benefit ensues. And this is apparent: for one who believes in human rights, is indebted to objective moral precepts, is prepared to sacrifice for an eternal good, knows he must be charitable to the poor, has been commanded to love even his enemies, and to be looking to the reward of HaShem instead of to his own present advantages, is the one who is likely to actualize those values in a society. But the one whose commitment to such a revelation is merely nominal, merely surface, not truly believing and practicing those values, how likely is such a hypocrite to produce the civilizational benefits the Hebrew-Christian tradition has to offer?

Is that not obvious?

This is the key problem with our present, Western situation. Nominally, we are told it is a "Christian" society, sometimes. Sometimes, and more accurately, we are told it is Post-Christian. But if it's "Christian" at all, these days, it's only nominally so, not deeply so. And while their remain many among those in our societies who do genuinely believe, their proportions and the depth of their commitments have often been eroded by the effects of modern consumerism and the disappearance of the "plausiblility structures" (Berger) that make those commitments part of the social environment.

Even in the US, the genuinely Christian impact on public policy and the shaping of society is no longer strong. In the rest of the West, it's even less, and by a considerable bit. This isn't just the result of the corruption of those social structures that used to conduce to faith, but also of things like increasing immigration and rampant propagandization through Hollywood, political secularization, the Socialist turn, and so forth. While Christianity continues to expand rapidly outside the West, the West itself has discovered a toxic cocktail of influences designed to diminish, if not extinguish, the impact of the Hebrew-Christian worldview.

If, then, your interest is in sustaining or renewing the Hebrew-Greek or Jewish-Christian civilizational resources, it will only come when people genuinely begin again to believe in the reality of those resources and the truth of the worldview they articulate. But in the West, the opposition to such a thing happening, both culturally and politically, is quite vicious.

And recently, the West has found a new strategy: to sidetrack the attraction to the Hebrew-Christian moral and civilizational tradition into unhealthy and extreme movements like the so-called "Christian" Nationalism, which is really just another Leftist project of political power-grabbing, and one that plays instantly into the metanarrative the Neo-Marxist set is currently weaving. Thus, even the efforts at a return to the benefits of that civilizational heritage are being co-opted for Supersessionist and Neo-Marxist political goals, rather than for any return to things like Judeo-Christian values.

The upshot, I'd say, is this: fake Christians and fake Jews do not renew civilizations. Unbelieving people cannot shore up a worldview or a political renewal. A fervent and believing return to Judeo-Christian piety might, but nothing less would achieve the goal. So I think that severing your desire for civilizational preservation (quite legitimate and noble, as I see it) from the question of actual belief in the worldviews that sponsor that civilization is bound to be doomed. The price of civilizational renewal is real belief, not merely a longing for the civilizational benefits, but absent such genuine belief.

What say you?

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 12:32 pm That's because you know nothing of philosophy and are too stupid to ask those who do for help. Anybody who does could read the post I shall quote below and know that IC is terrible at the subject, then they can check whether he has the imagination to even wonder if he has misunderstood anything, and then thy realise that he is unfixably bad at it.

Well — and again — what you are about, at least most often, is acting as an ‘acid’. I do not know what else to make of it. It is not my issue yo solve nor to be much concerned about except as it pertains to the wider society.

As to Frege — I’d not ever heard of him. I glossed some references though. I am interested in a general way in the rise in our present of ideas and views that, in our societies, have been marginalized and assigned to evil categories. Myself, I remain (I think) quite Liberal in my orientation and politics, but as I have said I am interested in those “transvaluations of values” (especially in Liberal society) that reform one accepted view, presented rationally and widely accepted, and succeed in turning it upside-down completely. We see this going on and, at the very least, it is interesting if also a bit dangerous.

I did find the following comments on a website that, at least, are thought-provoking.

What are we to think about the fact that so many of the most important philosophers of modern times were racists and/or sexists of the most horrible sort? Or rather, what are we to think about the standing of their books, in light of the political alignments of so many of these authors with horrifying political projects, such as white supremacy, extreme misogyny, anti-Semitism, and colonialism, to name only a few?

If the case of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and fascism were an isolated incident, we could dismiss this one example as the singular “bad apple,” bearing no real relationship or affinity to the wider Western-philosophical tradition, and threatening it only with the risk of a flimsy and ultimately false form of “guilt by association.” That, indeed, would provide everyone with a motivation to disassociate themselves from Heidegger, in the Figal style, and perhaps even to stop reading Heidegger or taking his intellectual achievements seriously (which Figal himself was unwilling, he said, to do). Alas, however, Heidegger is not an “outlier” or an anomaly of this type. Instead, he represents yet another case of something very familiar, even normal, in the history of modern Western philosophy: the racist “Great Philosopher.”

Consider the company he keeps, in this regard:

(a) As an initial example, recall David Hume’s pioneering (in a double sense) declaration of white supremacy: “I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation.”

(b) Another “Great Philosopher,” Immanuel Kant, attested to the influence of Hume’s sceptical view of inductive inference on his own project to develop a ‘transcendental idealism,’ immune to the problems posed by an empiricist view of knowledge. But it wasn’t only at the level of epistemology that Kant’s work followed in the footsteps of Hume. Kant took up Hume’s racism, too. According to Kant, who developed a plethora of early pseudo-scientific race-theories, the Indigenous people from the Americas are “incapable of any culture,” so that their “racial” position “stands far below even the Negro, who occupies the lowest of all other levels which we have mentioned as racial differences.”

(c) Then there is the famous egalitarian lover of liberty, John Stuart Mill. Like Hume and Kant, he thought of non-Europeans as fundamentally incompetent and lacking the capacity for autonomous self-determination. According to Mill, colonial domination was not only a good thing in general, but the very idea that colonizers could act “towards a barbarous people” in a way that might be deemed illegal or immoral was a grave error. On the contrary, he argued, “despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians,” as he says in On Liberty, since, like children, colonized peoples need to be “improved” by forcible obedience to “benevolent” overseers.

(d) More recently, as mentioned in passing above, there is the case of Gottlob Frege (who died in 1925). Widely held to be the founder of what has come to be known as “analytic philosophy,” Frege was quite clear about his intense anti-Semitism, his hostility to democracy, and his fondness for virulently anti-Semitic fascist politicians (especially Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff, co-leaders of the “Beer Hall Putsch”). Frege was arguably more full-throated in his denunciation of the Jews and the Marxists even than Heidegger (although, again, this hardly amounts to a defence of Heidegger!). Frege was particularly worried that Jewish people had equal civil rights in the Weimar Republic, along with other “people of different races under us who claim to be considered as Germans.” He reflected nostalgically about how, when he was growing up, “Jews were generally not permitted to stay overnight in my native town of Wismar; only during the annual fairs were they allowed in, and they would then ring the bell for them to come in and ring the bell for them to leave.”

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 3:10 pm As to Frege — I’d not ever heard of him.

Of course you hadn't. He's extremely famous but only to people who have something to do with philosophy, a category that excludes you and IC

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 3:10 pm I did find the following comments on a website that, at least, are thought-provoking.

That's nothing particualrly thought provoking. I already told you Frege was a proto-nazi and that alone is the thing you developed an interest in, not what it was that he did that makes him philosophically interesting - that is something you wouldn't understand even if you could imagine caring about it.

This is why your views on whether mister Can is a good philosopher or not are as utterly unimportant as his own. Neither of you has any business having views on such matters.

Except, my dear acidic wild-child, I am interested in philosophy as it pertains to how people, moreover people in our culture who determine events, understand their world and act in it. And predominantly that is what is discussed all around this forum.

And it very much is thought-provoking the degree to which values are changing, and the degree to which people are turning against values that have been, in a sense, thrust down their throats. And it seems to me that you embody that forcefulness, that brutality, The slightest deviation from accepted canons of determined thinking evokes from you instantaneous condemnation. It is like a mechanism that is triggered.

This is why your views on whether mister Can is a good philosopher or not are as utterly unimportant as his own. Neither of you has any business having views on such matters.

Except that isn’t what I said. I said I am sure he has significant background in philosophy. I said more as well. And I certainly do not think that you have any special right to make such pronouncements as you do make, about him or anyone.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 6:19 pm Except that isn’t what I said. I said I am sure he has significant background in philosophy.

You don't need an opinion on that topic, you have no use for one.