ANTHROPOLOGY UNBOUND: "The mind crashes," the philosopher said!

FRIDAY, MAY 21, 2021

The anthropologist's tale: We were thrilled, but also amused, when we stumbled upon the example of "Meinongianism" reproduced below. 

In our view, the language was transparently silly. In our view, the language was so transparently silly that it illustrated a larger point in a way few people could miss.

The passage to which we refer was written by the leading authority on the work of Alexius Meinong Ritter von Handschuchsheim,  an Austrian "philosopher" of the late 19th century.  

We first broke the news on this matter in Monday's report. In words which mean nothing to anyone in the end, the leading authority had started by saying that Meinong was a "realist" known for his unique "ontology." 

In the end, such argle-bargle can be explained by no one. At that point, though, the leading authority provides pure pleasure live and direct from the gods:

His theory of objects, now known as "Meinongian object theory," is based around the purported empirical observation that it is possible to think about something...even though that object does not exist. Since we can refer to such things, they must have some sort of being. 

Pure delight! Continuing directly: 

Meinong thus distinguishes the "being" of a thing, in virtue of which it may be an object of thought, from a thing's "existence", which is the substantive ontological status ascribed to—for example—horses but not to unicorns. 

Pure pleasure, direct from the gods!

According to Meinong, because we can imagine objects or entities which don't exist, "they must have some sort of being!" 

Their state of "being" differs from their state of "existence," the philosopher went on to say. Or some such thing of some type.

Because we can imagine a unicorn, "it must have some sort of being!" Presumably, the foolishness there is so undisguised that anyone can spot it.

Presumably, anyone can see the peculiar drive to complexification which animates such pointless formulations.

Presumably, anyone can spot the cult of compulsive mystification. The apparent addiction to comically useless mental activity. 

The later Wittgenstein suggested that much of traditional academic philosophy was born within the Cult of Complexification. According to Professor Horwich, the academy eventually decided to deep-six Wittgenstein's later work, specifically because it showed the academy's traditional work to be incoherent and useless.

Can it possibly be that our greatest intellectual giants were lost in fogs of incoherence and comic complexification? This important question came to mind when we read Paul Krugman this morning.

Krugman was writing about the strange career of crypto-currency, which somehow lingers on. We thought of Meinong and the unicorn's "being" when Krugman offered this:

KRUGMAN (5/21/21): First, crypto boosters are very good at technobabble—using arcane terminology to convince themselves and others that they’re offering a revolutionary new technology, even though blockchain is actually pretty elderly by infotech standards and has yet to find any compelling uses.

Second, there’s a strong element of libertarian derp—assertions that fiat currencies, government-issued money without any tangible backing, will collapse any day now. True, Britain, whose currency was still standing last time I looked, went off the gold standard 90 years ago. But who’s counting?

According to Krugman, deluded cryptocurrency boosters "are very good at using arcane terminology to convince themselves and others" that they’re engaged in some sort of  revolutionary advance.

In essence, the later Wittgenstein suggested that traditional philosophy was nothing but "arcane terminology" in service to such illusions. 

Meanwhile, how about that second assertion—the assertion that crypto boosters like to suggest that the world will collapse absent their revolutionary services? Reading that, we thought about the most instructive passage in Professor Goldstein's highly-regarded book from 2005.

The book purports to explain why Kurt Godel was the greatest logician since Aristotle. At issue is Godel's famous incompleteness theorems—theorems built out of certain issues involving "paradox."

Goldstein's book is called Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel. The most puzzling (and instructive) passage in the book says this:

GOLDSTEIN (pages 49-50): Paradoxes, in the technical sense, are those catastrophes of reason whereby the mind is compelled by logic itself to draw contradictory conclusions. Many are of the self-referential variety; troubles arise because some linguistic term—a description, a sentence—potentially refers to itself. The most ancient of these paradoxes is known as the "liar's paradox," its lineage going back to the ancient Greeks. It is centered on the self-referential sentence: "This very sentence is false." This sentence must be, like all sentences, either true or false. But if it is true, then it is false, since that is what it says; and if it false, well then, it is true, since, again, that is what it says. It must, therefore, be both true and false, and that is a severe problem. The mind crashes. 

"The mind crashes," Goldstein says, and we can't say that she's wrong.

But how about it? Should the mind crash in the face of the liar's paradox? Six decades after the later Wittgenstein's death, we were amazed to see a leading philosophy professor presenting such sillybill blather.

Should the mind crash over that "paradox?" Obviously no, it should not. The oddity here is easily explained. The explanation goes like this:

In normal circumstances, before we can say that a statement is false, someone must make a statement! There has to be a pre-existing claim before we can say that it's false!

In the case of "This very sentence is false," there's no pre-existing statement. No one has made a statement yet—and, until someone does, it doesn't make sense to seem to say that the (non-existent) statement is false.

There's no statement yet which could be false! As such, we're looking at a collection of words which don't make any definable sense, except as a bit of a parlor trick.

You can assemble other strings of words which don't make any sense. Here are a few examples:

Strings of words which don't make sense:
Up is down.
"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe."
It's now 3 o'clock on the moon.

For various reasons, those strings of words don't make exactly make sense, each in its own way. But we don't flip out and say that the mind should crash in the face of such presentations. Nor should we let our mind crash if someone seems to say that a statement is false, even though no one has actually made a statement.

Goldstein builds upon this ancient example as she explains, or at least as she tries to explain, Godel's famous theorems. For our money, her attempts to explain Godel's alleged theorems are so heavily jargon-laden—so weighted down by technobabble—that they will prove useless for the general reader, whether the general reader recognizes that or not. 

That said, a top anthropologist came to us with a more radical tale. Tipping her cap to Cather's "Pioneer Woman," she told us this in the dark hour of night:

The anthropologist's story:

The human brain was wired in prehistory for tribal survival, this top expert said. The human brain was never wired for delicate analytical tasks.

The human brain was also wired for tribal solidarity—for consensus rather than nuance. According to this despondent scholar, this explains the way the academy joined ranks, as Horwich describes, to drive the later Wittgenstein from the public square, like the admittedly annoying Socrates before him.

This expert scholar connected her story to modern-day events. 

Stop expecting rational conduct on any side, she despondently said. We humans were never the rational animal. We're tribal all the way down.

She also offered fascinating perspective on the phenomenon she called The Absence of the Scholars:

First, the logicians stayed away during the Reagan / Bush / Clinton-Gore years. The wider world needed their help with various major issues involving "daily logic." But this group has always lived in separation from the realm of the everyday. 

In truth, they're largely a group of Meinongs, she said. They puzzle about the unicorn's "being" as opposed to its "existence." They're inclined to fiddle in such ways as the society burns.

Then we reached the most heart-rending part of this scholar's tale. Today, it's the anthropologists who need to speak up. But they won't, she declared.

"The anthropologists need to tell us why we're sliding toward the sea," this unparalleled expert said. "In the end, it happens to every large society. Now it will happen to us."

We humans are built to divide into tribes and force other points of view out. Or so the disconsolate scholar said, before shambling back into a cave from which loud wailing  soon emerged.

Three cheers for Meinong, we'd happily said, thrilled by the banality of his comically complexified so-called "theory of objects."

No one could fail to see the absurdity, we had thoughtfully said. But according to the anthropologist's tale, we humans simply aren't made for such work. Also, we never were!


55 comments:

  1. Yesterday on Twitter, Krugman was frequently reminded of his old comments.

    Krugman, 1998: “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law' becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other!

    By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. https://hbr.org/2015/02/what-research-tells-us-about-making-accurate-predictions

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  2. "Presumably, anyone can see the peculiar drive to complexification which animates such pointless formulations."

    Somerby is a disgrace to philosophy majors everywhere. In his impatience, he seems to misunderstand what philosophy is about and why such "complexification" is necessary.

    There is a tendency for the simple-minded to dismiss the necessity of complexity in our world, but the deeper you dive into knowledge, the more complexity you find. Somerby may not be temperamentally suited to such a dive now (if he ever was), but that doesn't make knowledge useless or "argle-bargle".

    Next Somerby will be calling for defunding of the universities. That truly will signify the collapse of civilization because it will end progress in many fields, including those important to things like addressing global climate change and creating the next pandemic vaccine.

    Let's hear it for little minds!

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  3. The existence of con artists selling cryptocurrencies cannot speak to the importance of ideas expressed by various philosophers, just because both cryptocurrency and philosophy have complexity and jargon not immediately accessible to everyday people. Somerby's mind seems to have crashed today.

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  4. Somerby seems to think it is brilliant to say that a sentence which contains a paradox doesn't make sense. As mh pointed out yesterday, this is just descriptive, not explanatory. Godel deals with why such sentences cannot make sense and his theorems are about self-referential statements (according to Goldstein). Godel's work is far from nonsense and Somerby himself admits that when he calls paradoxical statements senseless.

    Then a quotes several nonsensical sentences from Chomsky's work that illustrate how sentences can follow grammatical rules and yet still not be meaningful. That is an entirely different problem, one of linguistics not logic. And apparently, Somerby has never heard of semantics.

    Somerby is in over his head and his tendency is to dismiss everything at that point. That is intellectually bankrupt and explains why he didn't go on to grad school, but why on earth did he continue as a philosophy major when he doesn't seem to like the field much?

    Goldstein says the mind crashes in the face of a logical contradiction because logic fails, not because the sentence makes no sense semantically.

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  5. "The human brain was never wired for delicate analytical tasks."

    If this were true, we would never have been able to perform such tasks, and yet we do (not all of us, but those with the training and capacity).

    There is insufficient evolutionary time for our species to have evolved such a capacity just in the recent, recorded past when such analysis has appeared. It seems more likely that, without recorded history, we have no idea how astute our ancestors were, analytically speaking, how nuanced. It make have been considerably so, since I believe survival in prehistoric times was harder than it looked.

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  6. "In truth, they're largely a group of Meinongs, she said. They puzzle about the unicorn's "being" as opposed to its "existence." They're inclined to fiddle in such ways as the society burns."

    Substitute the word "bigfoot" for "unicorn" and consider that not a few men have devoted their lives to tracking down such mythical creatures. In that case, the being of the name motivates considerable human activity. When an imaginary word has the ability to produce effects like that, how can it be dismissed so easily?

    Now substitute the words for abstract concepts, terms which have no physical existence but instead refer to ideas which cannot be illustrated using concrete (physical) examples. Does love not exist because it has no physical existence but is instead a subjective event or a feeling state, or an idea about a relationship between people? Is love argle-bargle because of the way it must be defined?

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  7. Somerby leaps from the idea of tribes which exist to support survival in prehistoric times and places, to the forcing out of tribal ideas to promote cohesion with such a group. But there is no evidence that tribes, by their very existence, must force out any ideas. In hunter-gatherer times, most people lived in extended family groups (tribes came much later and the term does not apply to such groups). Group cohesion was based on kinship and shared struggle, not shared ideas, although shared belief emerged with religion and language or geography-based similarity. But again, that was later, after tens of thousands of years of evolution without tribal organization. It seems more likely that the imaginary concept of love preceded the imaginary concept of the tribe, by a great deal of time. And without the capacity to imagine things not seen, neither would have emerged in human thought.

    So, why is Somerby working so hard to put down all of these philosophers who he encountered in college, all except the one who gives him permission to disparage the others? Maybe it is delayed adolescent rebellion and Somerby is angry at his elders for luring him into an academic major that leads to no career path, short of grad school? That hardly seem to be Godel's fault.

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  8. Indeed, dear Bob, Madam Goldstein is sloppy in calling it "sentence", where in fact she's talking about a logical predicate.

    But what she wrote is a popularization, so it's understandable.

    "Because we can imagine a unicorn, "it must have some sort of being!" Presumably, the foolishness there is so undisguised that anyone can spot it."

    Far from 'foolishness', this seem trivially obvious, dear Bob. Of course what we imagine has 'some sort of being'.

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    Replies
    1. Sentence refers to its linguistic form. Logical predicate refers to its logical form. It can have both.

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    2. Mao, it’s all in your head.

      Delete
    3. I know, I know. You are some sort of being whose only purpose is to entertain me. And I can switch you off any time.

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    4. Yes, it’s called the click up or down or out of the blog maneuver.

      Anonymices don’t know that they have that ability.

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  9. Today, Digby describes Trump's use of the DOJ to go after the press. At one point she says:

    "as we know, his growing hostility towards the press became one of his most powerful organizing tools."

    Trump's animosity toward the press was displayed at every rally, long before his election.

    That's why Somerby's relentless attacks on the press here at TDH support Trump and undermine the public's faith in a free press, essential to our democracy. He may be doing it as a pseudo-liberal, using a more nuanced and analytical approach, but he is advancing conservative memes and helped along Trump's efforts throughout Trump's 2015 campaign and his subsequent administration.

    I see Somerby's attacks on meaning as an extension of these political efforts to promote lies and disinformation by undermining the sources of truth in our society.

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    Replies
    1. Change “media” to “police” in that summation and perhaps you’ll have a clue as to how authoritarian you sound.

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    2. The media and the police do not play the same role in our society. Words have meaning and cannot be randomly swapped without changing what is being said. The press holds a protected status in our society because of the role it plays in supporting our democracy. Think back to your high school civics class.

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    3. You can logically use precisely the same rhetoric about guarding democracy and protecting American values were you running such rhetoric up the flagpole on behalf of the cops.

      Law enforcement and journalism are indispensable institutions, but neither is a priestly callings. Both institutions employ people who are as subject to corruption as anyone on the planet and both institutions have the power and the means to make life very hard on the people in their respective crosshairs.

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    4. You can logically use precisely the same rhetoric about guarding democracy and protecting American values were you running such rhetoric up the flagpole on behalf of the cops.

      Law enforcement and journalism are indispensable institutions, but neither is a priestly callings. Both institutions employ people who are as subject to corruption as anyone on the planet and both institutions have the power and the means to make life very hard on the people in their respective crosshairs.

      Delete
    5. You can logically use precisely the same rhetoric about guarding democracy and protecting American values were you running such rhetoric up the flagpole on behalf of the cops.

      Law enforcement and journalism are indispensable institutions, but neither is a priestly callings. Both institutions employ people who are as subject to corruption as anyone on the planet and both institutions have the power and the means to make life very hard on the people in their respective crosshairs.

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    6. Read this and then tell me this isn't a calling:

      https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

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    7. “Law enforcement and journalism are indispensable institutions”

      The press enjoys specific protections under the Constitution.

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    8. It may be a calling in the sense that it’s a vital service that requires a high level of ethical conduct, but it’s not a calling in the sense of the divine, no matter what journos tell you...

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    9. mh, it is individuals (Many of them are not employed in journaliism!) who enjoy the broadest protections under the Constitution and it the police who are at ground zero in doing that.

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    10. Understand too that the more you argue that a certain profession is particularly protected (whether priests of journos) the MORE accountable they are to the public, not less.

      You’re arguing for more scrutiny and more responsibility in hearing from the people that they serve.

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    11. Freedom of the press is a specifically enumerated right in the first amendment. The word “police”, on the other hand, does not appear.

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    12. Okay, here goes:

      "Today, Digby describes Trump's use of the DOJ to go after the police. At one point she says:

      "as we know, his growing hostility towards the police became one of his most powerful organizing tools."

      Trump's animosity toward the police was displayed at every rally, long before his election.

      That's why Somerby's relentless attacks on the police here at TDH support Trump and undermine the public's faith in a free police, essential to our democracy. He may be doing it as a pseudo-liberal, using a more nuanced and analytical approach, but he is advancing conservative memes and helped along Trump's efforts throughout Trump's 2015 campaign and his subsequent administration.

      I see Somerby's attacks on meaning as an extension of these political efforts to promote lies and disinformation by undermining the sources of truth in our society."

      No, Cecelia, it doesn't make any sense at all. First, Trump never attacked the police. Second, authoritarians require police to bolster their power, so they do not attack it. Third, the police do not guarantee truth or protect against disinformation. Fourth, the police cannot be said to be protective of democracy either. Fifth, authoritarianism and democracy are opposites and so, if this paragraph is trying to support democracy, it cannot be also authoritarian.

      So, your typically glib remark doesn't work and makes no sense, much like a lot of what you write here when you aren't just making noise.

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    13. mh, even the press is accountable to following the Constitution as interpreted by the courts and as enforced by authorities, including law enforcement agencies. These institutions are both regulated.

      The press has no extra-constitutional role. Neither does the church. You are free to criticize the hell out of these entities, whether you are a politician or plumber. Whether about Fox or MSNBC.



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    14. “ So, your typically glib remark doesn't work and makes no sense, much like a lot of what you write here when you aren't just making noise.”

      No, in your typical concrete fashion you are unable to fathom that a defunding of the cops as an issue in particular city politics and by many on the left is indeed prone to the sort of over the top defenses as you’re issuing for the press.


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    15. It must be tiring carrying those goalposts all over the place.

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    16. No, it really is possible to not want to defund the police and to not call them murderers and also believe that some of the defenses launched on their behalf asinine and inconsistent with accountability.

      Try truly reading the rhetoric around here. It’s not hard to find yourself on middle ground at all.

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    17. “No, Cecelia, it doesn't make any sense at all. First, Trump never attacked the police. Second, authoritarians require police to bolster their power, so they do not attack it. Third, the police do not guarantee truth or protect against disinformation. Fourth, the police cannot be said to be protective of democracy either. Fifth, authoritarianism and democracy are opposites and so, if this paragraph is trying to support democracy, it cannot be also authoritarian.”

      Oh, that’s just brilliant. I can’t use the police as an analogy of of a profession that gets special pleadings even though that complaint is daily made here about them.

      Why? Because Trump didn’t criticize them...

      Oh, and authoritarians need the police, who therefore must be presupposed to automatically fall at the feet of tyrants, but the press isn’t capable of backing that sort. Unless, of course, they do...

      The cherry on the top is the argument that since Trump criticized the media and Somerby criticized the media, he is therefore willfully abetting Trump, though Somerby has been at it since Bush.

      I suppose this argument has “being” since it’s in your head, but it’s 2+2 = 5, therefore you’re guilty of helping Trump too.

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    18. “No, Cecelia, it doesn't make any sense at all. First, Trump never attacked the police. Second, authoritarians require police to bolster their power, so they do not attack it. Third, the police do not guarantee truth or protect against disinformation. Fourth, the police cannot be said to be protective of democracy either. Fifth, authoritarianism and democracy are opposites and so, if this paragraph is trying to support democracy, it cannot be also authoritarian.”

      Oh, that’s just brilliant. I can’t use the police as an analogy of of a profession that gets special pleadings even though that complaint is daily made here about them.

      Why? Because Trump didn’t criticize them...

      Oh, and authoritarians need the police, who therefore must be presupposed to automatically fall at the feet of tyrants, but the press isn’t capable of backing that sort. Unless, of course, they do...

      The cherry on the top is the argument that since Trump criticized the media and Somerby criticized the media, he is therefore willfully abetting Trump, though Somerby has been at it since Bush.

      I suppose this argument has “being” since it’s in your head, but it’s 2+2 = 5, therefore you’re guilty of helping Trump too.

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    19. Cecelia, you said that if I substituted the word police for press, it would make the same sense and show me how authoritarian I was being. Stick to defending what you said.

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    20. Anonymouse 5:17pm, try doing it. There’s nothing in the Constitution that entertains the idea that the harshest of criticism against the media by any entity is tantamount to undermining democracy.

      The same goes for religious institutions.

      You have trouble with this argument try substituting the term “media” with “Fox News”.

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    21. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

      Criticism of the press is one thing but siccing the DOJ on the press is interference with the press by the government. That is what Trump did.

      The reason WHY the press was specifically mentioned by the Constitution is because it is necessary for the public to have access to information in order to responsibly exercise the vote and provide a check and balance on the actions of those elected to office.

      This has been interpreted to mean that the press is permitted to protect its sources, that it cannot be censored by the government, and the government cannot tell the press what to print. When the DOJ starts putting people in jail over what is printed, that has a chilling effect on the freedom of press guaranteed by the first amendment. Trump's targeting of the press, so that members received death threats, was an infringement of the free press.

      So, yes, Trump did undermine democracy by violating the 1st Amendment right to a free press. There is no comparable right to a free police force -- your ridiculous suggestion earlier today. Trump showed clear favoritism to right-wing media such as Fox, with is also a form of government interference in the freedom of the press.

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    22. Tefresh your memory with thiis maneuver against reporter James Rosen and https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/ticket/obama-admin-spied-fox-news-reporter-james-rosen-134204299.html the AP by Obama’s DoJ



      Also remember that it was the Obama Admin that launched an FBI investigation into a president elect based upon a falsified FISA warrant application.

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    23. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-media-trump-reporters-sources-obama-0611-20180608-story.html%3foutputType=amp

      Delete
    24. Meh. Trump will go after the police, the same day Josh Hawley allows me to over-rule corporate boardrooms.
      All hat. No cattle.

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    25. Cecelia,
      Thanks for all you do.
      You seem to have a good read of the goings on in the Republican Party. What's with all the voter suppression of minorities?

      Delete
    26. Meinongianism, Anonymouse 10:47pm.

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    27. Dear 10:47 dembot, may we advise you to tell the person who was allegedly 'suppressed' to go to court and make the case? Y'know, instead of endlessly flapping your zombie lips?

      Delete
    28. Thanks, Zippy, but why do you want me to pretend the courts larded with Republican judges should care that black people's rights are taken away?

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    29. Those marginalized black voters can always call the cops on the GOP, which might work if we had cops who didn't kill black people for sport.

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    30. Oh dear, Republican judges. Bummer. Sounds like going back to Africa might be your best bet then.

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    31. There's the Establishment and white supremacy loving Right-winger we've all come to expect of Mao.

      Delete
    32. Tsk. Why such a hatred for Africa, a paradise with zero racism and not a single Republican on the whole continent, dear dembot?

      Do you feel, perhaps, it might be too hot for you, dear? Not so. Go to Nairobi, it's quite comfortable. The best climate on Earth, some say. A paradise, we tell ya.

      Go, dear, go. You got no excuse not to.

      Delete
    33. I love Africa. It's fascists (they're called "Republicans"" in the USA), who I hate. (Although, really, what kind of sentient human being doesn't?)

      I loved Lagos when I went there, and look forward to my trip through Ghana, which I had to re-schedule due to the pandemic.

      Delete
    34. Good. Stay in Ghana, enjoy the fascist-free paradise, see if your brains recover, at least partially.

      Report back in a year.

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    35. Thank you Mao.
      If I find a bigger piece of shit there than Trump, I'll send them to the States to be the 2024 Republican Presidential nominee.

      Delete
    36. We know, dear dembot, we know. And we sincerely hope that a few years in African paradise will cure you from this and all other tics of yours.

      Delete
    37. Everyone over two-years old knows Republicans will always choose the biggest piece of shit to represent them.
      It's the closest thing they have to s political ideology.

      Delete
  10. “There has to be a pre-existing claim before we can say that it's false!”

    This is just a restatement of what Goldstein said:
    “Many are of the self-referential variety; troubles arise because some linguistic term—a description, a sentence—potentially refers to itself.”

    Since she clearly recognizes the self-referential nature of this kind of paradox, one wonders what comes after the part Somerby lifts from her book. Does she qualify her statements? Does she expand on them? What is the context of these remarks?

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  11. “Strings of words which don't make sense:
    Up is down.
    "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe."
    It's now 3 o'clock on the moon.”

    Only the first sentence is an example of a paradox.

    As a previous commenter said, a paradox isn’t simply a nonsensical statement. It contains what seems to be a contradiction, which it is sometimes possible to resolve. (For example, a man standing on the exact opposite point on the earth from me would travel in a direction towards the center of the earth that, if I went in that same direction, would take me into the sky. So “up (for me) is down (for him).)

    The bigger problem with the term “paradox” is that mathematicians don’t use it. Russell didn’t announce the discovery of a “paradox” when he was examining classes in set theory; he called it a “contradiction.”

    The contradiction is a standard mechanism for disproving mathematical assertions. If the left hand side of an equation resolves (for example) to zero and the right hand resolves (for example) to one, that is a contradiction and serves to disprove whatever the assertion was, since zero cannot equal one. It is not a paradox, because there is no way it can be shown to be true given a greater context, in the way that “up is down” can be.

    ReplyDelete
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