Where are the goddamn PHILOSOPHERS?
Via ZH as usual:

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Davis said in an interview that he is "no longer certain about claims he made to reporters on background and on the record in recent weeks about what Cohen knows about Trump's awareness of the Russian efforts."

99% of our "news" is ATROCIOUSLY BAD EPISTEMOLOGY. If we had actual philosophers, they would be unraveling this nonsense and pointing out its infinite bonkersness.

Since the philosophers aren't doing their JOB, let's try to do it for them. Systematize this mess.

[WaPo claims that [Davis claimed to [know that [Davis no longer knows about [his claim to [know what Cohen [knows about what Trump [knows about a [totally non-existent and thus unknowable fairy tale.]]]]]]]]]

That's EIGHT LAYERS of claims and knowledge and anti-claims and anti-knowledge, based on a delusion (RUSSIAN_MEDDLING) that anyone who ACTUALLY KNOWS THE SLIGHTEST MICROBIT OF REALITY knows to be a delusion.

There is NO ACTUAL EVENT in any of this mess.

NOTHING HAPPENED.

Which means there is NO NEWS and NO INFORMATION. All we have is a stupendous and stupefying pile of BAD PHILOSOPHY. It's a mishmash of midrash.

What are the professional philosophers doing? According to this article on current trends in philosophy, they're philosophizing about the comparative value of current trends in philosophy. They're disputing whether professionalization of professional philosophers is a good thing, disputing whether Analytic Philosophers are better than Continental Philosophers.

Pissing contest. Swift's Bigendians vs Littlendians, still running 200 years later. Totally useless waste of money and academic office space.

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Counternote: It appears that a few philosophers have been trying to systematize knowledge and claims, but they're not USING their symbols and systems for any ACTUAL PURPOSE. Mainly they're pissing on each other.

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Literary note: I read Gulliver when I was a kid, and I didn't understand most of the references. I hadn't really thought about the Bigendian stuff since then. Now that I've been cooking and eating eggs for 50 years, I know that you can't break an egg at EITHER end. You aim the spatula at the middle. Did Swift know this? Was this the point of emphasizing the ends? Hard to tell. I doubt that he ever did any cooking; he would have relied on domestic staff. Before plumbing and refrigeration, cooking was strictly a full-time job. Now I can step into the kitchen, grab ingredients from the fridge, slap them together in a pan, eat the result, then return to my regular work 30 minutes later.

Labels: epistemology, From rights to duties

  ¶ 12:17 AM