josh blog

Ordinary language is all right.

One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.

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13 Mar '13 03:51:53 AM

I'm always convinced that Descartes betrays himself by the sublimity of his examples: who distinguishes 'the sky, the earth, the seas' from one another? Who does it on the basis of anything?

13 Mar '13 03:14:42 AM

Does any work which addresses a universal audience first have to constitute its audience as a universal one?

12 Mar '13 09:53:26 PM

It's a bad sign that a philosopher may be inclined to start explaining what a condition is by indicating a blank spot in a conditional statement, written on a blackboard: 'whatever goes in here…'.

12 Mar '13 09:50:12 PM

What serve us most paradigmatically as examples of 'conditions'?

12 Mar '13 07:56:37 PM

'There is a splendid statement in one of Herzog's films. The main character asks himself a question and then says, Who will answer this answer? Actually, there is no question, answers are all one ever answers. To the answer already contained in a question (cross-examination, competition, plebiscite, etc.) one should respond with questions from another answer. One should bring forth the order-word of the order-word. In the order-word, life must answer the answer of death, not by fleeing, but by making flight act and create. There are pass-words beneath order-words. Words that pass, words that are components of passage, whereas order-words mark stoppages or organized, stratified compositions. A single thing or word undoubtedly has this twofold nature: it is necessary to extract one from the other—to transform the compositions of order into components of passage.'

12 Mar '13 09:10:13 AM

Sound inference: Foucault numbers things all the time, but doesn't indent them, so he must not be an analytic philosopher.

11 Mar '13 01:01:38 AM

'…proceeding from the middle, through the middle, coming and going rather than starting and finishing.'

10 Mar '13 07:23:24 AM

Even in a single case, investigators and prosecutors (and defense attorneys) will try to come up with a 'theory of the crime'. —A kind of theory that seems innocuous, and indispensable, in comparison to the ones Wittgensteinians want to abjure. But look at the sorts of tests to which such theories are put; and note how they're tested by juries, by ordinary people.

10 Mar '13 06:46:37 AM

'Unfortunately, excuses are too frequently conjured to avoid doing an autopsy: the "obvious" suicide, motor vehicle crash victims, the 85-year-old man found dead at home with no medical history, etc. In reality, there are two very good reasons to autopsy the "obvious": one is that sometimes the "obvious" is not… and the second is that the public we serve expects answers to questions that are not necessarily related to the cause of death.'