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obviously the form of a horse exists in this weird world of the forms which is kinda mythical and unclear and it's been ages since i studied plato, whereas horse-ness is... a concept? but i dont understand in what capacity horse-ness exists. Is it dependent upon a consciousness regarding it? If it is then i might get back to you in an hour or so and ask a follow up question. I have a feeling it might not be for many philosophers though, and if it doesn't HOW DOES IT EXIST.

a ghost is defined in part necessarily by its immaterial existence (lets ignore ectoplasm etc)

how does a universal of something immaterial yet concrete exist?

perfect island and all that

iirc russells idea is along the same lines as wittgensteins in the tractatus i.e a universal is an atomic fact that is instrumental in the construction of propositions but you dont necessarily need to be able to point to it. Think they fell out about it, can't remember how though.

Plato just thought everything aimed towards the forms existed by virtue of things having to aim towards some sort of perfect form. Though I know fuck all about plato. Only know a bit more about russell. Know a lot about wittgenstein though.

crass generalisation over.

i think i've just made an awful mistake in writing my essay and i'm trying to find any way to blag my way around it. Why is really fucking hard to do in metaphysics.

thereby giving only two options were you to accept the immaterial nature of holes- either that they are representations of a platonic form or they are mind-dependent concepts. Like, not just hole-ness but holes themselves are mind-dependent. And it's looking really unlikely that this is going to work.

can anyone think it's platonic?

is this to act as bouncers to keep ordinary people out of the philosophers club?

why is philosophy discussed in terms of what <great men> have said?

<great (or famous) men>s words are not universal (pun intended)

I wish I could borrow waffle's account and just do a blank post.

i'm asking a specific question about philosophy cos i wanted other opinions on stuff relating to my academic work. It's not like someone made a thread about holes and i started talking about all this stuff uninvited

would more practice would help?, or would it be easier if most people/society were not fed so much false (or misleading) information/learning in the first place ?

I mean, I'm reasonably familiar with the core stuff, but I make sense of it in the context of continental philosophy, which will probably give it inflections that are bound to annoy the fuck out of your analytic philosophers.

I know next to nothing about Russell.

Even so, I'll have a quick look into this when I get into work (say, 45 mins).

thereby giving only two options
were you to accept the immaterial
nature of blank posts- either that they are representations of a platonic form
or they are mind -dependent
concepts . Like , not just blank post- ness but blank posts themselves are mind -dependent. And it 's looking really unlikely that this is going to work.

Better you than me. That's exactly the kind of thing that I hate about philosophy. Sure, I like to know what the 'great thinkers' thought were the pressing philosophical problems of their time and how they sought to solve them, and so knowing how Plato or Russell would explain a whole is interesting enough.

But actually seeking to decide between them, or arrive at some solid metaphysical account of holes?

it is waffle, though. a lot of philosophy is thoroughly pointless.

YOU'RE POINTLESS!

^exustentialist, see?

between Forms as universals and Forms as something else (because a lot of modern interpreters of Plato claim that Forms are basically just universals with some extra mythical gubbins attached) is that Plato thinks that Forms are self-predicating, i.e. that the Form of Largeness is itself a large thing (this view seems to be shown most clearly in the Phaedo re: largeness (100c4-6) or the Euthydemus 301b5 re: the beautiful), whereas universals are just the shared property of the group of things and need not be self-predicating. Plato's conception has issues with regression (the Third Man argument in the Parmenides). Russellian universals are, I think, not said to be physical things (and aren't self-predicating) and are also not mental, i.e. we don't just think them up and they would exist with or without rational thought about them, and that universals subsist and have being whereas we and our thoughts exist in a jumbled, imperfect world which is "fleeting and vague" compared to universals "rigidness". Basically Russell seems to be agreeing with Plato on the dichotomy between the world we experience through our senses and the world as it 'actually is' (the veil of perception problem). His neo-Platonism is basically just indirect realism then, and their conceptions only differ on the self-predication front and in the lack of mystical stuff in Russell's account.

Sorry if that's garbled or irrelevant.

academia for the sake of academia.

a great deal of modern philosophy doesn't enrich us even the slightest.

So don't pay attention when people talk about it and go do something else.

i'm just gonna abandon a lot of the stuff i've said. Loads of it is the kind of content and phraseology that would get my lecturer really annoyed.

Think i'm just gonna go for the idea that holes only exist so that we can make equivalence relations between holes and other things (there are as many holes in neo at the end of the first matrix film as there are fingers on my right hand, for example). I don't think there's any other reason why holes would exist. The matter that's shaped like holes is just perforated in a number of ways, doubly-perforated, triply perforated or whatever. Without our consciousness inventing holes, they wouldnt exist- they're mind-dependent. If we hadn't invented holes we wouldnt be able to make equivalence relations, because in the same way that we say `i have as many fingers on my right hand as a square has sides`, we need that immaterial object (i.e sides or holes) in order to be able to make that relation. It's just a unique characteristic of holes that these immaterial objects are also concrete.

What i don't know is how exactly i can say that we invented holes. I tried to look at the literature on why fictional characters exist, but the guy almost literally says that they exist because we use sentences that assume they exist, and since we are therefore ontologically committed to saying they exist, they must exist. So that's not of any use. But i think i'm on a much better track.

Thanks a lot anyway though. Also if i'm still talking bollocks feel free to say so.

with neo i mean. i forgot about nostrils and his bumhole and all that stuff.

Just stop being such a massive poncey dingbat for ten minutes and let everyone talk about whatever they/we want without being subjected to your pretentious trolling.

the thing i massively, massively disagree with is that universals are rigid, to use your word. It's entirely possible that i'm just stupid, but i consistently fail to understand how the vast majority of philosophers i read think that, say, tallness is an objective universal concept?? I mean i literally understand that not a fucking bit

dyou know of any analytic philosophers that disagree with this then? so i can reference them and stuff.

Thanks a lot

don't though. It's fucking boring

where you have to decide between holes participating in the Form of Holeness or w/e and them being mind-dependent. It seems to me that holes can be pretty trivially explained in relational terms (x amount of space between points a,b,c,d,etc.) and for them to participate in forms they'd have to be objects themselves as opposed to gaps in other objects if you see what I mean.

I'll have a think/look and get back to you but I don't know of any off the top of my head (for lack of knowing much about them, not thinking that they all agree w/ the objectiveness of universals).

because there's literally no way you can say i have as many fingers as there are holes in this object without making reference to holes or some sort of synonym, which therefore means that holes must exist because you're using the abstract concept of hole-ness to determine how many holes there are in the object and then make the relation between that and the number of fingers.

This is the bit that i'm not making up from scratch btw, i'm just reinterpreting the literature

God, this sounds like an irritating essay to write. My sympathies!

it's not the best. i actually find a lot of it quite interesting, but it's all just so technical if that makes sense.

I'm not trolling, you div, I'm just being vocal about an awful lot of philosophy being useless.

stop being so fucking precious.

but one question: "holes only exist so that we can make equivalence relations between holes and other things" — how do you get the "so that"?

Do you need to explain *why* holes exist? Is that the point of the essay?

i mean i said they're mind-dependent, so in other words we created them for to fulfill a function. I'm just not sure how i can say that we've created an object that is concrete and exists in the external world. can we think them into existence in the same way that we can think the thought of angelina jolie into existence? and how would i say that so it wouldnt make my lecturer want to end it all?

I PERSONALLY THINK UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE IS QUITE A VALUABLE THING TO ASPIRE TO HAW HAW *nasal sound*

but i've already done that and to be honest, it didn't nearly amount to 4000 words. So i need a lot of filler*

*also i think it's pretty worthless arguing that holes do exist without saying what form they exist in.

like, i'm only saying they exist cos of the ER thing because that was the argument used in the literature to shoot down the idea that holes don't exist. I've assumed this is the *only* argument you could use to that end, but that might be complete bollocks. I can't think of another one, but i'm shit at philosophy so it's not too surprising.

like, a sound is a tree falling plus the resulting wave registering as sound in a person's brain. without the person there to perceive the wave as sound, it's just a wave.

and so on.

a hole is a physical thing. nothing more to it, really. it just *is*.

and a lot of philosophy complicates really intuitive things.

firstly, i think science encroaches on subjects best explained by philosophy, politics and so on. Especially in common discourse; there's the idea that political thought can be replaced by scientific study of so-called political phenomena, so that supposed political research is nothing more than human drones processing information through a given formula. It's hugely conservative. I can speak with less authority about philosophical encroachment of science but i'm sure there's similarities.

the tree thing is complex, i'm not hugely confident on my beliefs about this so i'm not gonna say them properly whilst robluvsnic's in the house, but to cut things short and keep them simple i don't think the tree makes a sound, probably doesn't even fall. I think this best explains a lot of stuff- for example why if we live in an objective reality can we never agree on virtually any concept. Having said this I know nothing about continental philosophy or polyvalence or anything that would really help to explain stuff i think much more clearly.

A hole is an immaterial thing, i think. This seems far more intuitive to me? My definition, although i'm gonna have to paraphrase it so i dont get done for self-plagiarism by the uni's internet drone, is that there's an area in space that they occupy, which matter surrounds at least in part, and for whom a total lack of matter in this are wouldn't mean they do not exist (i.e. they can be filled with gaseous matter, but if you take that away that doesn't mean the hole disappears). This means they're immaterial, not physical.

Loads of analytic philosophy is based on intuition. The intuition that there is an external observable reality is all but assumed as far as i can tell.

all my lecturers have despised me even bringing up the memory of idealism

in areas that science is far from authoritative.

I also agree that it's pretty stupid to call a hole a physical thing, for all the reasons still_here as laid out. I don't know that I would say that it is therefore immaterial (but that's not to say that I wouldn't call it that either).

The tree thing is stupid. If that's someone's idea of what philosophy is, then they're just embarrassing themselves. It's stupid because, as a question, it's formulated in entirely the wrong way, and it therefore prompts stupid answers (including the dismissive one above). If it has any use as a philosophical question, it's because it might eventually lead to the more interesting question: what do we mean by "sound"? What do we take to be its "properties"? And when we talk about sound (including in "serious", "real-world" contexts, where we might be trying to do something "useful" rather than waste time on this pointless wankery) to what extent are these properties accounted for?

Moreover, there are so many uncontroversial counter-points to the claim that sound is just a wave that I almost don't know where to begin showing the folly of that claim.

Partly because I don't know what this "mind" is that we're talking about, but mostly because of the full-on forms of idealism that can come out of it.

E.g. in what sense have "we" "created" the "object" that we call holes? The question, for me, would be what kind of object is a hole? How can and do we make sense of them (where the "we" in that question can all too easily flip between some notion of a transcendental subjectivity, and a particular interpretive community, and an individual person)?

grey areas, naturally, are open to debate in such a way.

often you just have to simplify, refer to facts (without debating the nature of a fact ot anything so silly). resources, for example; there is only so much oil or phosphorous left, which has to be most important factor in policies in which these resources are a factor at all.

after that, sure we are going to argue in predictable ways. the fact that unquantifiables like faith factor in is unfortunate, but even irrational beliefs are a predictable thing. getting too philosophical is dithering. this is why political change is so slow. if you boil certain issue down to quantifiables, the course of action that best benefits the populace should be obvious.

-

we live in an objective reality but we are subjective beings. we perceive a great many things differently. but ultimately there are things that are grounded in objectivity.

a sound wave being a wave that is tjen perceived as sound. a tree falling being an object moving under the influence of gravity and coming to a halt because of the ground resisting any further movement. a hole being a void in a physical thing. it is real because the surrounding matter is real. an absence of matter is still real. if the particles of a piece of wood with a hole through it dissipate, the wood disappears just the same as the hole.

to doubt the realness of these physical things is just irrational. it's just mysticism aroused by the limits of self. solipsism, yes?

KNEW i shouldn't have said anything about the tree thing.

i kinda like it for the nostalgia as much as anything. Doesn't excuse me for being massively ignorant on the topic it's supposed to represent and which is one that i think is really important but whatevs.

I don't mean to imply that there is a single answer to that question. Because in one sense the answer to that question is that the objectivity of a hole can take the form of a concept. But that certainly isn't all that a hole is — and, indeed, many would argue that by examining the objectivity of a hole insofar as it takes the form of a concept, one hasn't actually grasped the objectivity (materiality) of holes at all. Though, of course, how do answer the philosophical question of "what kind of object is a hole?" except by way of forming a concept?

what more is there to sound than a wave of a certain frequency vibrating the receptive organs and being processed in the brain as sound?

I mean, what is there that isn't the domain of science?

let me rephrase that: the objective reality of sounds persists even in differing physical interpretations. there is no doubting the existence of sound. sure, a person might cease to be able to perceive a sound beyond the physical sensation of the wave passing through them, but that doesn't preclude its inherent potential.

anyway, I was using that as the most basic example of the kind of wankery that irritates me. this hole nonsense is just an extension of that kind of hollow (ahem) musing.

a hole can be filled with gas, solid, liquid, but ultimately it has physical dimension just like anything else.

"subjective things are philosophy's territory" — almost the opposite! philosophy's remit is largely the realm of the universal and the objective.

"if you boil certain issue down to quantifiables, the course of action that best benefits the populace should be obvious." — Oh, jesus, we've got a staunch utilitarian on our hands. There are many rigorous philosophical critiques of utilitarian ethics, but it's enough I think simply to show that your position derives from a philosophical position — so much for the pointlessness of philosophy... apparently all it does is show the way to a better life.

"we live in an objective reality but we are subjective beings" — prior to Kant, philosophers would have laughed at you for suggesting such a thing, if they could understand what you were trying to say. Even in Kant, subjectivity is transcendental subjectivity and the very ground of a certain kind of objectivity, and not that which dooms us to some kind of irreconcilable conflict of perspectives, grey areas, etc.

"a hole being a void in a physical thing. it is real because the surrounding matter is real…. to doubt the realness of these physical things is just irrational" — see, if you knew anything about the thing you're trying to dismiss, you'd know how ridiculous it is to present that as an objection. Where has anyone denied that holes are real?

but well beyond my ability or capacity to argue. The stuff in this post i'm replying to I mean. It also sounds very not analytic and i wouldn't wanna test it out on an essay where the deadline is 12 hours away.

Which isnt to rubbish what you're saying at all, it sounds really interesting, so thanks.

With the first of your two posts... yeah. I wouldn't say it was idealist, mainly because i'm arguing that the matter itself is objectively real, but that we've conceptualised a new object based on certain characteristics of the perforated matter. I'm not entirely sure what happens if an individual doesn't know about holes- i mean, i think even if you disagreed that holes exist, the fact that you're discussing it means you really do know that they exist (maybe that's didactic, idk, but i don't have space in this essay for that kind of nuance). For the person for whom holes just don't occur.... they don't exist? That's what i'd want to say. After all, an absence of consciousness would necessarily obliterate holes from existence as far as i'm concerned. I guess you'd have to ask in what sense they are objects then, and i'd refer to Quine's `ontic commitment` probably because i've given up on ideals and started being a pragmatist. As van inwagen describes it, if you talk about something as if it's an object in a way that's consistent with the way that you talk about all other objects that exist in your ontology, then unless you possess false beliefs about the nature of that phenomenon, you are committed to saying that that thing is an object. And i guess if your ontology is consistent then it's fair enough to say that it IS an object. Therefore, given that i refer to holes in a similar way to how i refer to all other objects...........

the fucking point's got lost here somewhere. I stopped writing for a bit and came back to it. I think it was basically something like ontological commitment of this sort doesn't necessarily commit oneself to asserting the objectivity of all objects? idk

Feel like all this is horrendously simple, cos i mean it obviously is, but here goes:
mind = cognition that recognises and interpretes abstract objects, can extrapolate universals from particular objects. there must be something i'm missing but i cant think of a way in which that's too controversial
we = uh.. conscious beings i guess. i think i kinda answered this a bit with my ramblings above
created = this seems to me a fairly basic function. We see certain materials have certain properties, create universal concepts based on that (i.e. objects are perforated, objects can have multiple perforations, there are as many perforations here as i have fingers to stick into them, these perforations must be particular objects themselves). I hope that's not too stupid. But yeah i dunno, i wouldn't say holes are in any particularly special way a socially constructed concept any more than general language and its meaning is, but perhaps the ontology that causes holes to become objects is.
object = just anything that exists. I think Quine or Van Inwagen used this terminology, so i'm not too concerned about that

if this isn't philosphical doubt regarding the objectivity of physical things, then what is it?

re: philosophy being objective or subjective, I'm saying that the only things philosophy has a claim for are the unquantifiable things, things that have no objective certainty and therefore reside in subjective discourse.

re: philosophical vs. scientific in politics, I am aware that using scientific facts as the primary basis for policies is itself a political philosophy. I'm just saying that it makes more sense to base policy on something concrete as opposed to anything so capricious as an individual's feelings on an issue (yeah I know, the notion that scientific basis is more sensible is a feeling - it's just on steadier ground than other feelings).

re: subjective beings in an objective world, I'm sticking to my guns. it's simplest and, I believe, sanest just to go with it. questioning the objectivity of reality is futile.

but then I also think that pretty much all discourse, philosophical or scientic, regarding the limits of reality is pretty pointless. there are limits to how much we can or ever will be able to comprehend.

and because I find myself in the rather odd position of defending a discipline that I'm actually quite ambivalent about.

what exactly do you mean be "reality" and "existence" here? who doubted that sound exists? is it possible that your beef with philosophy boils down to simple ignorance (wouldn't be the first time in history that hostility arose from ignorance) — i.e. that you don't understand that when philosophy uses/explores the concepts of reality, existence, etc., it's not using the terms as you ordinarily understand them?

Anyway, you've already changed your position from "sound is a wave" to "sound is a wave" PLUS the reception of that wave via "receptive organs" and a "brain" that is capable of processing it as sound.

So there's already more to it than just being a wave. What if the point of the question of trees falling in empty forests — again, only a question that your caricature, born of ignorance, of philosophy would ask — were merely to identify this fact?

There's also the question of sub-sonic, super-sonic, and the limits to audibility in terms of field and pressure. Is it a sound if a dog can hear but a person can't?

Also: if a sound is not only dependent upon the right sort of receptive organs for it to be a sound (as distinct from a vibration) but is temporally-bound in an extreme way — i.e. a particular sound does not exist for millennia (and longer), suddenly comes into existence, and then disappears as quickly, never to exist again — then in what sense is it an *object*? It seems to me that sound is not an object but an event, subject to contingency of being heard in particular ways. Indeed, we might turn from trees to music to think about the different *modes of listening* that shape what is heard. (But I said I would proceed quickly…)

Finally (for now), most people claim that they hear themselves think, or that they can hear a song in their mind And most, when prompted to think about it, would agree that they dream "in sound" (i.e. that in their dreams they hear things as well as see them. What's going on there? What is this hearing in the absence of a "sound"? Or is the sound absent after all?

Now: I'm sure you can go through and respond to each of those points, rejecting them here, denying that you were suggesting otherwise there, and altering your description of your objection along the way, while insisting that a given point is not addressing what we were originally addressing. Two things, though: (1) that's precisely the fucking point: we've opened it up to recognise that something we took to be simple is actually a theoretical convenience for a much more complex set of phenomena and significance; (2) nothing in the above questions/claims is made either in the name of or with a view towards denying that there are sounds, that people hear them, that they don't have certain physical properties, that they aren't "real". What we've done is arrive at a more nuanced understanding of this "thing" we call sound — of the *potentials* inherent in it (to use your own words).

And if we come to recognise that sound is event-like and relational rather than objective in the sense that the properties of Hydrogen are objective, how is that not a useful outcome?

you're reacting to a whole bunch of claims and positions that you have collected under the name "philosophy", but which are not claims or positions that the discipline of philosophy and the philosophical canon entertain. You're criticising orange juice for having too much milk in it.

and you know what else i'm gonna leave a massive gaping hole in my essay ON PURPOSE cos i basically give up. Fuck you eric I DARE you to mark me down.

I'm just saying that these are philosophical problems in their own right, and hardly firm ground to be building an ontology of holes on.

But the question has served its purpose: when you say "we create holes", you mean something like consciousness has constructed a certain concept of holes, through which we make sense of given (empirical) holes.

On the question of "object" see my post up ^there about sound not being an object.

might have to do a find and replace thingy

"For Plato, the real world was the one of universals. Whatever we could declare about a perceived reality is only accurate by virtue of perceiving that a particular participates in universals. Russell writes, "Plato is led to a supra-sensible world, more real than the common world of sense, the unchangeable world of ideas, which alone gives to the world of sense whatever pale reflection of reality may belong to it." Russell sidesteps the issue of mysticism as it arises from Plato's theory of perceiving a universal like an object, and investigates the theory's logical basis.

With an analysis of ordinary language, Russell explores how we normally think of common words. He claims, "proper names stand for particulars while other substantives, adjectives, prepositions, and verbs stand for universals." He also claims that human speech habitually involves at least one word denoting a universal in each sentence. All of this is to say that all truths necessarily involve universals and our knowledge of those truths involves an acquaintance with universals."

So basically he takes Plato's idea and changes the terminology a bit in order to eliminate the inherent mysticism of his original theory.

fucking hell, my browser has eaten two whole responses. I'll just leave it at this because I want to sleep: the only hostility on my part is resulting from your continuous misunderstanding/ignorance re: what I've been saying and your undermining of my position by suggestions of ignorance.

in the development of science. Especially people like Aristotle who was a philosopher and pretty much laid the initial principles for study of the natural sciences.

Also Russell who you seem keen to debunk as a crank with his head in the clouds made some very important scientific contributions through the fields of maths and logic.

I wouldn't be able to have a pop at French Cinema because I'd seen My Father The Hero and in the same way I wouldn't expect someone who seems to have a very, very basic understanding of Philosophy to deem it useless because of that.

You're a good lad but your point is bogus.

you've taken a number of stances on philosophical issues yourself anyway. Robluvsnic has dealt with them way better than I could have done so that's all well and good. Just wanted to note my amusement at your dismissal of philosophy ^up there^ being so obviously based on completely misunderstanding what any of us are talking about/the 'point' of the discourse. I refer you back to my earlier point about you being a dingbat.

i got a bit confused near the bottom of the thread but i like it when dissers start going off about things i have no idea about at all.
simultaneously confusing and illuminating.

HOLES

Great work, everyone.

with accompanying sharp pain in head and single stream of blood coming out of my left nostril.

this is what happened on the shipyards in the 50s
somebody found out that 1 philosopher could do the job of 10 scientists and just like that the whole of govan is unemployed

go off and read some husserl ya fuck

just a lot of recent work that seems to be unnecessary. I'm saying that up to a point, it has been useful, but when you get to this discourse over the reality of holes (I know what I'm saying, here, I say 'reality' very deliberately), it's just empty discourse.

and in this back and forth, my understanding of certain things has been called into question seemingly to undermine my arguments. I don't feel as though I've been properly responded to. I've said a number of things that've been slated for being based upon ignorance, but I've had no explanation why.

at least part of one of his posts up there tried to engage with me to some extent, so I'm going to properly respond.

s_h has called into the question the objective nature of reality, as in if we don't perceive something happening, how can we be sure of its objectivity? I dispute this, suggesting that it makes more sense just to accept the objectivity of physical things beyond the subjectivity of our senses.

I'm not disputing that things get more complicated when you get to the differences in perception. I'm just saying that a physical phenomena is grounded in objectivity, and being transitory like a sound wave doesn't take away from that.

I'm sure the initial 'tree falling with no-one around to hear it' idea originated as a catalyst for inquest into the nature of reality, to provoke deeper thought which perhaps lead to investigating the perception of physical phenomena. but it also arouses thought regarding whether what we perceive is truly real, and though some conclusions of use can result from this - see the scientific discourse re: the differing perception of colour - it also results in absurd thought experiments like the 'brain in a jar' scenario.

the examples you put forward re: the perception of sound are very interesting, but this is all the domain of science.

the use of 'reality' just confuses my point re: holes.

a hole is a physically-defined space. it may be immaterial in the sense that it is an absence of solid matter, but so what? please elucidate on this idea of holes/hole-ness, if I'm missing the point.

I regret that it seems like I altered my position on the objectivity of sound from that initial comment.

though a wave only becomes a sound when it is perceived, it still has the objective potential to be perceived. same with the electro-magnetic spectrum, etc.

I, [as somebody who hasn't taken the time to investigate their thought or engage in discourse with even the people in this thread who are trying to help me out] have decided that it makes more sense just to accept the objectivity of physical things beyond the subjectivity of our senses [because it just does, ok?!].

I'm not disputing that things get more complicated when you get to the differences in perception. I'm just saying that [I can't be bothered and it just makes sense like i already said DUUUHHH]"

although as evidenced upthread, you have to be really rigourous in constructing your arguments because people will come at you from all kinds of angles.

they'll hone in on the tiniest flaws in the construction of your argument and use them to deconstruct everything you've said (or think you've said or WHATEVER).

you have to be really particular in how you word things/read the wording of other things in law, right? you'd do fine with all of this, I reckon.

I still haven't had any breakfast. argh.

have just done to be deliberately inflammatory. The argument isn't are holes are real thing lolz it's what language is applicable to describe them and why that is so. What principles are necessary to understand things that exist and how we can talk about them. I wasn't a massive fan of Linguistical philosophy when I was doing my degree, probably as like you say it's an intellectual exxercise and one that I'm not clever enough to partake in, but to label it as useless is ridiculous. Especially on the back of a science is better ticket, being that most of the people you're deriding had in some way an influence on science. Logic and study of mathematics being closely tied up to philosophy

this isn't a blanket position on all the work of all the philosophers. I appreciate that up to a point, philosophy has influenced science, but I'm suggesting that it's best left alone after that point.

it is this linguistic philosophy really gets to me. intellectual masturbation and nothing more. breaking down the logic of language just confuses thing; though language might be far more complex than it seems to the casual observer, I don't see how this level of analysis benefits us.

'breaking down the logic of language' is how computers work. I'm coming round to take your macbook off you, btw. Will be 20 mins.

philosophers.

Also the fundamental crux of science should be I don't know so let's try and find out, surely someone so fervently devoted to the importance of science can appreciate that position in other disciplines.

Also I don't understand the benefits to this level of examination this doesn't mean there aren't any or that you should be so dismissive of something that you or I have next to no knowledge about.

i only went into it because I can make people do things they don't want to do and more importantly, I can make them think they want to do it and that it eas their idea. I win at negotiation. I also like the long lunches and love pencil suits. Pretty sure I'd be fucking awful at philosophy because i can't smile sweetly at it whilst telling it not to be so fucking stpuid.

this was the key text for my essay. It's actually quite a fun read, and only about 10 a5 pages long, so yeah...

http://www.philosophy.org.vt.edu/files/9013/4455/4412/Lewis_and_Lewis_-_Holes.pdf