What are you currently reading?

[hopefullytrusting]

Starting this week, very excited: Serge D. Elie's A post-exotic anthropology of Soqotra, Volume 1

[AnotherSpin]

Starting this week, very excited: Serge D. Elie's A post-exotic anthropology of Soqotra, Volume 1

I had the idea of going to Socotra. But the logistics are crazy. There's only one flight a week from Yemen (!!!). And there are no people there except tourists. And after all, the most interesting thing about travelling is the people, as I've learned in the forty or fifty countries I've been to.

[AnotherSpin]

I'm not interested in philosophy as such, but in any text, I hope to find poetry.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

You guys may enjoy Hilary Putnam's paper "Brains in a Vat"

https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Brains%20in%20a%20Vat%20-%20Hilary%20Putnam.pdf

Also, Descartes's dream hypothesis- everything you have seen and experienced in your life could have been your dream. He doesn't emphasize the postulation per se, but he does that we are unable to disprove (or prove) the hypothesis. So he presents an epistemological, rather than ontological, question.

Jakob von Uexküll, biologist, explains that different species live in different, subjective worlds. Through evolutionary process, species in different environments have acquired different senses, thereby different worlds in order to optimize their reproduction and safety. The human world of space and time maximized the survival of human species. So did the world based on temperature to ticks/lice. Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" presents a similar hypothesis in epistemological question.

[Kalevala]

Ironically I've never read The Handmaid's Tale, although it is Atwood's most well known work. I remember encountering it when it was relatively new and thinking, "huh, the patriarchy is so over, it's not coming back." One of my least perceptive thoughts. At this point it seems to depressing a topic to read about in a novel.

My favorite books of hers are Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin. I also recently read one of her early books, Surfacing, and found it compelling. I'm generally not a poetry person, but I found her poetry collections Power Politics and Dearly to be compelling.

I think that I have a copy of Alias Grace somewhere amongst my books; not the best organized at the moment.   I know that I have also read (again decades ago) another of hers titled Bluebeard's Egg and Other Stories.

K

[Mandryka]

Also, Descartes's dream hypothesis- everything you have seen and experienced in your life could have been your dream. He doesn't emphasize the postulation per se, but he does that we are unable to disprove (or prove) the hypothesis. So he presents an epistemological, rather than ontological, question.

Jakob von Uexküll, biologist, explains that different species live in different, subjective worlds. Through evolutionary process, species in different environments have acquired different senses, thereby different worlds in order to optimize their reproduction and safety. The human world of space and time maximized the survival of human species. So did the world based on temperature to ticks/lice. Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" presents a similar hypothesis in epistemological question.

I would argue that The Private Language Argument disproves the hypothesis. That's to say, a thought is only possible if language is possible, and language is only possible if there is a community of speakers.

Remember that if to be is to be the value of a bound variable in the best explanatory predictive theory, then ontology and epistemology are very closely linked. You have to ask, what are the assertability conditions of the propositions in the explanatory theory? to confirm meaningfulness.

(I knew all this stuff would come in useful one day!)

[Mandryka]

Re Uexküll,  have you read Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?"?

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf

[Mandryka]

I'm not interested in philosophy as such, but in any text, I hope to find poetry.

I was there - I went to those lectures!

I'll tell you a story. My friend was given the job of looking after him while he was in Oxford. One night, she was woken up by a call at about 1 a.m. It was Kripke "I'm writing tomorrow's lecture and I don't have an india rubber. Please bring one over straight away!"

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Re Uexküll,  have you read Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?"?

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf

Yes. Bible.

[Mandryka]

Yes. Bible.

How did you get into psephology? Or should I ask, how did you get into philosophy?

I guess you're aware that Michael Dummett, my old supervisor, was an expert on voting procedures as well as logic and Tarot.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

How did you get into psephology? Or should I ask, how did you get into philosophy?

I guess you're aware that Michael Dummett, my old supervisor, was an expert on voting procedures as well as logic and Tarot.

Schopenhauer around time graduating high school. After him, Kant et al. Also, always I was interested in philosophy of art/aesthetics. Some of my colleagues are philosophers but they never talk about philosophy.

I will study The Private Language Argument. Thank you very much for your suggestion.

[Mandryka]

Schopenhauer around time graduating high school. After him, Kant et al. Also, always I was interested in philosophy of art/aesthetics. Some of my colleagues are philosophers but they never talk about philosophy.

I now wonder what you make of this - which I have never read I should say

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voting-Procedures-Michael-Dummett/dp/0198761880

He was a very sweet man, adorable and funny and formidably clever.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I now wonder what you make of this - which I have never read I should say

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voting-Procedures-Michael-Dummett/dp/0198761880

He was a very sweet man, adorable and funny and formidably clever.

I haven't read the book. It seems to me that Dr. Dummett, a prominent scholar in the field, presents a mathematical/economic theory of best/optimal system of voting. He constructs and "advocates" a voting/election method. Scholars in political science don't advocate anything. We analyze good and bad aspects of the extant methods in the real world. We also analyze sincere behavior of voters (Ie Liberal Democrats voting for their party) vs. strategic behavior (ie. Liberal Democrats voting for Labour) in this world.

Often, economic theorists of voting tend to construct ''best " theories assuming that most representative system is the best. Political scientists are more agnostic. We tend to think that in addition to fair representation, there are other values, such as transparency, easiness to understand, satisfaction for voters, simpleness, low financial cost, low risk of fraud, etc. We tend to think that the relative importance of these values are depending upon individuals' ideology. So, social science cannot conclude that one method is better than others overall. That will be a normative/philosophical question, rather than a scientific question.

Does Dummett perhaps support/recommend the Single Transferable Voting method?

[JBS]

Also, Descartes's dream hypothesis- everything you have seen and experienced in your life could have been your dream. He doesn't emphasize the postulation per se, but he does that we are unable to disprove (or prove) the hypothesis. So he presents an epistemological, rather than ontological, question.

Jakob von Uexküll, biologist, explains that different species live in different, subjective worlds. Through evolutionary process, species in different environments have acquired different senses, thereby different worlds in order to optimize their reproduction and safety. The human world of space and time maximized the survival of human species. So did the world based on temperature to ticks/lice. Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" presents a similar hypothesis in epistemological question.

I have to wonder if Descartes knew of Chuang Tzu (Zuangzhi) dreaming of being a butterfly.

[Mandryka]

I haven't read the book. It seems to me that Dr. Dummett, a prominent scholar in the field, presents a mathematical/economic theory of best/optimal system of voting. He constructs and "advocates" a voting/election method. Scholars in political science don't advocate anything. We analyze good and bad aspects of the extant methods in the real world. We also analyze sincere behavior of voters (Ie Liberal Democrats voting for their party) vs. strategic behavior (ie. Liberal Democrats voting for Labour) in this world.

Often, economic theorists of voting tend to construct ''best " theories assuming that most representative system is the best. Political scientists are more agnostic. We tend to think that in addition to fair representation, there are other values, such as transparency, easiness to understand, satisfaction for voters, simpleness, low financial cost, low risk of fraud, etc. We tend to think that the relative importance of these values are depending upon individuals' ideology. So, social science cannot conclude that one method is better than others overall. That will be a normative/philosophical question, rather than a scientific question.

Does Dummett perhaps support/recommend the Single Transferable Voting method?

No idea.

If you can get hold of Dummett's book from a library, I'd be keen to see if he has anything to say about issues like cost and transparency versus fairness. I never discussed questions about collective choice with him in fact, but he was certainly interested in ethics. He was a  campaigner against racism (his wife worked for an anti-racism organisation) and he was a devout catholic.  He talks about this in the preface to one of his books - I can check later but maybe Frege (vol 1) or Truth and Other Enigmas.

The other thing he was an expert on is Tarot - not for fortune telling, but for card games.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2658254-the-game-of-tarot

[Mandryka]

I will study The Private Language Argument. Thank you very much for your suggestion.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wittgenstein-Rules-Private-Language-Kripke/dp/0631135219

[ultralinear]

In a way reminded me of Ilf & Petrov's The Twelve Chairs, in that the plot (a detective story) was less interesting to me than the details of the setting amid post-revolutionary chaos - in this case 1919 Kyiv.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

In a way reminded me of Ilf & Petrov's The Twelve Chairs, in that the plot (a detective story) was less interesting to me than the details of the setting amid post-revolutionary chaos - in this case 1919 Kyiv.

Looks interesting. Good to see you again.

[Ganondorf]

Not yet finished with La Debacle, yet I decided to read this Zola work too. The title character in this is an utter piece of shit, even by Zola's standards, but Zola writes very well. Interestingly, IIRC, originally instead of Jacques Lantier, it was going to be Etienne from Germinal who was going to be the protagonist of this book but the unexpected popularity of the character led to Zola creating a third brother in Lantier family in Jacques. I seem to remember from Germinal mentioning of Etienne's hereditary madness to murder.

[Kalevala]

Looks interesting. Good to see you again.

@ultralinear
K