Sunday, July 6, 2014

Portrait of a Logical Positivist as a Young Girl

Portrait of a Logical Positivist
As a Young Girl

And when she turned to me
and said “That’s silly, Daddy,
people don’t walk on water or
raise the dead,” I knew that
our Winnie the Pooh days
were gone for – I was going

to say good – ever

158 comments:

  1. "But quick-wittedness and rhetorical skills were not enough. Academic training strove to equip students with the general ability to test the proofs and conclusions presented in various areas of scholarship and subject them to systematic scrutiny. Reason, experience, and in theological questions, revelation formed the basis of true knowledge, and all findings were to be ordered intelligibly with the help of logical methods. Thus later work in specialized fields was built on a common educational foundation. The master of arts examination was required for all students except the monks. then came the next step--preparation for one's future profession as a theologian, lawyer, or physician." (Oberman, Man Between God and the Devil, p. 114.)

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  2. As Flannery O.said about Wm Faulkner: I'd hate to park my small canoe against his steamboad. I'd be swamped for sure.

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  3. Nice. To show my ignorance: I had not really heard about Faulkner before. If CBC radio does not take up a writer, I don't really know about him. They will, of course, greatly enlarge on any Canadian Prize Winners. Did you know that Canadian won for short stories last year? I had actually read her books having actually paid for them in a bookstore, years ago.

    Anyhow, Sound and Fury sounds depressing. It must be very good, though. So we will take Flannery's comment as a compliment.

    But really, I still want to get to the bottom of Aristotle, Occam and medieval scholastic dialectic, it's uses, training methods, and how it was superseded. Oberman is good for this. If you don't want to hear about it, I will pin it only to my blog.

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  4. I've given you my understanding of dialectic, as a practice. It was the word Plato used for how the philosopher got out of the cave (metaphor) It depends on opposition to edify, not to establish a Right/ Wrong.--to reveal relationship and complementarity, not to annihilate one side and salute the other. You can study philosophy or practice it. .

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  5. Plato was very much into right and wrong. You misrepresent him.

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  6. The cave is for those who do wrong and seek their selfish pleasures of the flesh and honours. They are wrong or deluded. In the philosophical school is a huge moral ethics element, the very thing that medieval philosophy stressed. With the reformation grace came to to fore. Hence Luther in the end declared himself an enemy of Aristotle. Or rather in the beginning. It was a starting point, a discovery in the borderland between medieval theology and via modern and such. (I have not got it down yet, with the via this and via that. Well that was the problem. There were so many via's and none of them were the freedom of the gospel.)

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  7. RIGHT as opposed to right. Plato's RIGHT was beyond the "cave" (culture, custom, convention) and dialectic was his means for getting beyond humaniac good & evil, to the ideas, forms. His Cave was his metaphor or analog for given environment of humanity - not just the wrongers and selfish. None of all classical thought was "the freedom of the gospel. Incommensurate, yes? Most modern and post-modern thinking is not "the freedom of the Gospel." Surely I misrepresent--that goes with saying seeing as often it is not said often enough (that we misrepresent).

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  8. "This suggests a final truth about creativity: that, in every dialectic, there is a search for creative synthesis. Or, as Albert Einstein put it, “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created." David Brooks

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  9. Plato spends almost the entire Republic talking about what is wrong in politics, such as with tyrants and oligarchs..., and with education suggesting censorship to protect public morals and training..., brings forth some very strange ideas to prevent the hoarding of women by the successful... He critiques the society of the day, and roundly and thoroughly. Then he also comes up with the cave and how you would not wish to win laurels from a society such as this. He is looking for something beyond but I don't think he knew what it was. He was looking for a king of righteousness, a king who was the opposite of the tyrant. I don't think he knew him in his day. I wonder if he knew about the Messaiah, the Christ (in the Greek), from the Jews.

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  10. The Forms (Ideas) is how he characterized the "something beyond" (outside the cave, assuming one knew one was in a cave--so to speak--which would be like "Joe Fish" knowing he was all wet.. Where does Plato say he was looking for "a king of righteousness? Why are we talking about Plato? The original concern was internecine differences between Christian denominations -- creeds and catechisms and who's Right and who's Wrong, and whether the differences among us eclipse is not occlude the sames

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  11. Creeds we share. They unite. They are not internecine. Except maybe with Calvinists. I am not familiar with their many separate creeds and rules about worship and hymn books. Most of us share Apostolic, Nicene and Athanasian creed. They unite. Is that too much Amen? What would you like us to be like?

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  12. Plato wanted a king, not a tyrant. A philosopher he was supposed to be, which sounds a little self-serving. I guess Plato might consider philosophers outside of the cave.

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  13. And, most obviously, Christians are united in their King, who is also Prophet, Priest, and, yes, perhaps to please the Greeks--philosopher. Whose very body they happen to be in a mystical Whole. Does he not satisfy everything, only without being self-serving?

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  14. Broh calling Calvinists abominations. Orthodox Presbyterians calling other Presbyterians in error,corrupt. Catholics insisting they are the only true church. This is what inspire my Facebook work out with FB friends of atheist to fundamentalist, orthodox to reform to progressive to liberal persuasion. Creeds that are shared: no problem. United in the spirit of Christ--no problem. Where there's peace and unity. Kumbaya. I'm referring to the internecine pharisee hair-splitting letter-of-the-law quibbling. Plato has nothing to do with this argument, other than to signify you've worked your way thru the Republic to discover it's inadequacies and self-serving metaphors and how much he is not Christian. Nothing in Plato about creating the world in 6 days, or immaculate conception or curing the blind, changing water to wine, raising the dead, or rapture or heaven and hell or creedal catechism differences among denominations of Christians. Aristotle doesn't talk this way either. Occam, I believe was known not only for reducing complexity but by drawing a razor cut between incommensurate material and spiritual ways of thought and talk. Christians are united in their King-=Serving except when they quibble and consternate themselves with who's got it right, whose got it wrong--self-denominational-servingl-which is what this argument is about.

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  15. I don't believe you have let me take any of this stuff up, so I don't know how we can talk about it. It us all adiophra to you. Om.

    I gotta go blow some bubbles and collect some hugs. (Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen). I love you Sam and Jesus washes us clean. XO. :)

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  16. Me? Let? There's that "supposed" permission habit of yours again. The "stuff" I've been putting into play is the pharisee-like who's right/who's wrong (king of the hill," anti-dialectic) that I experience among my variety of
    FB friends. Plato has nothing to do with that. Or Occam. We did talk about dialectic for awhile--a practice that aims at edifying and not determining righteousness. What ever the token topics, you and I basically disagree with each other--and that's an attitude, outlook difference that has nothing to do with subject or content. Washed clean means nothing if one is not convinced of one's dirt. (Conviction of Sin: damaged and damaging if I do, of don't do. Perfect)

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  17. Luther got tired of philosophy, always teasing, never food.

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  18. Chesterton said the open mind has to close itself on something solid.

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    1. I agree: has to be closed in order to be open. One of the smartest kids I've had was a close-minded born again fundamentalist whose mind-set provided him with the stability to question everything--choose and reject what fit.

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  19. Ludwig Wittgenstein also seems to connect certainty with indubitability. He says that “If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty”.

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    1. Indubitably-no doubt. "doubt" is diminutive of "double"--seeing both sides of the coin say, on the one hand as well as on the other. Why does doubt (doubling) have such a negative stigama among so many. Wittgenstein saw language as a game.

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    2. I should have put quote around the whole thing. It came from Wikipedia.

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  20. How are we going to have water games today when it is raining? (I am also pretty certain that it is raining and will continue to rain for a while more.) -- Guess what, the cheap water paint from Dollarama stained the brand new waterproof aprons. Unbelievable. Some dear soul told me that the aprons now already looked "loved". I guess that's better than having it all over the clothes. The new aprons served their exact function. (They were the exact likeness of perfect water-proof-apron-ness. Nominalism tried to say that these things are just names and labels and don't need to have a Form. Yes?)

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    1. Oh those caterwauling & contentious Xtians and why can't they Just Get Along? That's what I want to know? How the nations doth furiously rage. Without names and labels "these things" would have no instrumental and practical and manipulative value. "Nominalism tried to say"-- right there: a nomination. "Sposed to" - a manner of speaking, figure of speech.

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    2. Nominate the nominalists for "trying to say" (as opposed to saying, maybe, or claiming, or nominating) "that these things are [just] names and labels and don't need tho have a form." --makes me think of things that don't have a form [love, hate, jealousy, God, on and on) and what we have for them is "just" names. But still--the cranky paranoid internecine inter-denominational squabbles of Xtian assertng their righteousness: that's what got me enthralled, fascinated. (Telll me more about Wittgenstein. )

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  21. I don't know anything about Wittgenstein, nor Nominalism, except what I just said. I am relying even with that bit on other sources, hence "supposed to", as in someone said... i.e. "What do I know?"

    Personally speaking, the Nicene Creed has always sufficed: "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible." -- I don't even need Kant to tell me that there are things we can't measure, observe, etc. because of the limitations of our sensory apparatus.

    Nevertheless, in my own opinion, not supposedly, I see these things organically related and not separable. You can try and take them apart to look at them more closely, but that is a delicate and perhaps not serviceable operation. Love is more than the material, it is a powerful force, as are ideas. But they work in concert with our hormones, brains, prior experiences, senses and inexplicable revelations, as we like to point out at times. To me this is all a package, just like the incarnate God. God and man at the same time.

    Luther's in cloaca discovery was this: God can be man, but the devil can only be ideas and in the head. God can be visible and touched, and was laid in a manger and soiled his diapers. The devil does no such thing.

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  22. That would be one more reason for Aristotle to have go.

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  23. http://ayinsrazor.blogspot.ca/2009/07/wittgenstein-on-plato.html

    In surveying Wittgenstein myself, I see, as he states quite plainly in the intro to Tracatus, that he seeks the limit to philosophizing. Everything we say is vague, but we must be as clear as possible. What we see is what we get. What we don't know, we can't talk about. Beyond the limit is "Unsinn", nonsense. A connection I see is to Karl Popper, whom he heard in Cambridge, and the stress of falsify-ability. If you cannot falsify it it is not ever a proof. When you are outside the limits, just be quiet. -- Sorry, the best I can do, on first look. --The German makes more sense I think because of the idioms and natural construction. The English translation makes the whole thing sound like some sort of secret code. Nevertheless by points 2... I was losing interest, and by points 3... my eyes were glazing over.

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  24. I think he may be also dealing with people like Freud (did read that somewhere) who come up with fanciful theorems, which everyone can quote and recite now, but they are just really not science, nor philosophy. The whole previous era was littered with "sciences", "Wissenschaft" (knowledge), that was really just crazy speculation. (Could put Darwinian evolution in there.) Religionswissenschaft--science of religion... Everything was a science of some sort, but it was really just theorizing. It was not philosophy, nor science, nor metaphysics, just talking. A real human being is who you are and the person next to you is, what is at hand, what is actually a "real" case, or situation.

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  25. Limits, yes. Science people claim they don't prove anything. What we don't know we can't talk about, although we do. You know God needs a diaper change and so you talk about it. Lutherans claim to know better than Calvinists, Catholics then Protestants. Quakers listen for the divine spirit. Muslims know enough not to personify or represent God. Atheists know better than everyone. Anybody can google anything and talk about it. What's the one more reason Aristotle would have to go?

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  26. Too ethereal. You will have an " omnipotent power" but not a God who gets down and dirty and involves himself.

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  27. We can talk about God because we have seen and touched him.

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  28. "God can be visible and touched, and was laid in a manger and soiled his diapers. The devil does no such thing." Just quoting you. Depends, then.

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  29. And he says: take and drink me for forgiveness of sins.

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  30. INCONGRUENCE . I’m not as good as my word,
    won’t walk the talk or practice what I preach,
    don’t feel your pain, pat puppies, smell roses or coffee.
    Immigration, security, ISIS, environmental change,
    corruption in politics on the right hand side of the aisle,
    religious fundamentalism, gluten and photoshopping
    don’t keep me awake at night but I have opinions and
    principles during waking hours and express them.

    I have no compassion or empathy ( both curse and blessing), but I can tolerate the intolerant bless their hearts for they don’t know what they do or any better. I cherry pick and selectively glean what suits my agenda in books, articles, & conversation, ignoring the rest, damaged and damaging if I do or don’t do reductively ripping off the whole in order to advance my purpose, aims, goals and measurable outcomes. My name is "name of God." Down and dirty for sure.No doubt.

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  31. But you can't be the devil incarnate. He does not incarnate.

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  32. Of course not: the devil's a manner of speaking--personified , deified --projected on others by some. Dirty diaper God--wretch like me: make no claims to be anything but what I am that I am.

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  33. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2014/07/the-catholicity-of-lutherans/#more-19247

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  34. All ONE in the spirit--and consequently can celebrate diversity. Catholicism.

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  35. Did you read Mathew Block's article? I met him recently when Gene Veith came to talk about the Christian imagination, sensibility and art.

    In thinking about what I caught from Wittgenstein and his demands for very precise thinking and language, what do you think he means by Sprachspiel-- language game?

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  36. I read Block--catholicity: all in the family. I never understood Wittgenstein. Over my head. The Media is the Message? (Marshal McLuhan--Canadian) A gap between HAP and the ways we talk about HAP--and a gap between ways we talk about hap and the ways we talk about the ways we talk about hap. Common sense, discipline, tradition: ways of talking about HAP.... Game?

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  37. I think there may be a difference between game and play. He seems the ultimate in structured precision, but language is really flexible and a sentence is malleable to the situation and facts at hand. The play is between the sentence and the whole circumstance or the entire set of circumstances. We learn language from the circumstance in which it is used, if it is true. He means this in the mathematical sense. He keeps using algebraic functions to illustrate this. Mostly he wants to show that language and thought are also real and can be equated to facts and circumstances. Maybe Sprachspiel is dialectic: getting at what is true.

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    1. HAP - what's happening. We reduce it to our terms, ways of talking. But it's always a reduction and a violence--a sampling, a convention, custom, culture. Suffer means to stand up under, but common culture sees it as pain. A gap often between common sense and original description.

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  38. Where we started was that he said that not everything can be doubtful, or else this is tautological. He deals with tautology and contradiction in 4.46. I think he wants to be able to say what is true in a circumstance.

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  39. Does that make him a logical positivist?

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  40. The logical positivists insisted (I believe) that only sense-verified statements made sense. Anything beyond that was literally nonsense and properly ignored as nonsense and unverifiable. Tautology (tautos: same) definition defined in it's own terms. I am that I am. A rose is a rose is a rose. Sleep is a dormitive quality. Be careful what you prey for... [I see what my mind-set bias & belief frames for me & my reason (ratios) serves my attitude. Think of a coherent, consistent grid which I place over a landscape: it allows me to reduce, measure and estimate and nominate (name) what is otherwise uncalculated or categorized. I get what I prey for. I never understood Witt, but I like the notion of game and play. (Ludic, lusory: play, game--the opposite is literally illusion, delusion--not in play, out of it)

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    1. Precision and Language are incommensurate. Precision and math--tautological.:

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  41. Just a game - negative stigma.
    A game - rules, principles, order: positive stigma.
    Play - to put something in play- positive stigma?
    To play around - negative stigma.
    Describe - aesthetic: view. Judge - ethic, evaluate. Ethic generally collapses aesthetic so that description is framed by the bias and values of ethics.

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  42. Wittgenstein was a bit of a mad genius, we might say, like my husband, like you, maybe. Mad geniuses everywhere. Only Luther not, not mad, not genius, just scriptural. A kind of relief.

    I think I might get Witt, if I had a copy and I could mess it up. He and Luther shared a concern in placing limits on philosophy. Some things are I commensurate, some would say.

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    1. Genius meant nothing more than one's "idiocy" realized, appreciated, factored in--one's vocation, calling. Philosophers place limits on philosophy. Or realize them. Logical Positivists placed limits on what makes sense--and refused to consider non-sense. Incommensurateness is a word indicated the inability to realized borders and limits and the extension and reduction of the values of one realm into another. We all do it. The limits we are aware of are not the limits that are limiting us.

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  43. Reread the thread: are we talking by each other? Can you pin the tale? Say what-it-is we are considering? What it is this conversation is about? (It's never about what it's about, says Steven Pinker: it's always about "the relationship.")

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  44. I am trying to get through Oberman. On the way we pass by Occam, Nominalism, certainty and doubt. Wittgenstein says language corresponds to the situation, and that is how we learned it in the first place. Just making stuff up is not science or philosophy. Does that help us; maybe not since we don't understand him, even though he is trying so hard to be precise and people think he is a genius. But I don't see him advocating ambiguity. So whatever else may be the case, he may not be your kind of guy. And whenever you say you don't understand something you are usually faking your not understanding. I know you that well. Yes, relationship. One guy's genius against another. Good thing, bad thing, no one has everything right, though Wittgenstein seems to think that maybe he has. You cannot believe falsely, knowingly, he says, which sounds a bit like Socrates... Any tales on any donkeys?

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    1. You sound like you are assembling snippits of wiki and google and displaying them like bumper stickers. Like you are taking a 5 day tour through minds-of-Europe and sending postcards home. "Wittgenstein seems to think" (he has everything right.) A tourist comment.

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    2. He thinks he has it right. He says that. Otherwise good point. :)

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  45. "Similarly to Nietzsche, Wittgenstein inverts the antiquated western metaphysical tradition which places the essential before the actual: the abstract is an abstract from the present material world. Thus the task of attempting to reach the real via a process of intellectual abstraction, or via an examination of linguistic forms, is doomed before it starts. The real is present before us - in analysing it and refining it into its (apparently) general essence we are not approaching the truth of the matter, the "real" which is concealed by the corruptible form of the actual, we are in fact becoming increasingly lost in the sterile imagination."

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    1. Nothing beats the beauty of a buzzard in flight.
      Lazy circles in the sky. Working a dead possum
      in the middle of the road--something else. But
      watch it lift-off--unfold, stretch, hoist and haul
      13 pounds air bourne . Panache. Redeems itself.

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    2. Not sterile. I want to see it.

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  46. "Wittgenstein has often been understood as standing counter to the Cartesian tradition which separates the mind (the essential self or soul) from the body (the corruptible material presence). His own picture, which we can glean from his various writings, is thoroughly integrated. The self is not an ethereal gaseous substance hidden from the world by this dumb robotic body through which it must attempt to make its presence and wishes felt...no, the self is that which is made manifest in and through one's actions. The self is not squeezed into expression via the body, the mouth, one's speech and actions but is given life, made real by these potencies. His comments such as "The face is the soul of the body" (CV23) and "The human being is the best picture of the human soul" (CV49) serve to make clear his own approach to 'essentialism'. The essence is that which is realised (literally, made real) by the contingent."

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    1. essence, being: the root meaning of "sin" (es, esse) carries not negative stigma until part of essence and being is denied and covered. Body, Mind, Soul, Spirit--manners of speaking differentiating the whole.

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  47. I like organically integrated, or incarnational. This is what "I Am" like. My soul is not something separate from my body and life. Christ is not God and man like two boards glued together. He is both fully everywhere. This is why we Lutheran stress against Calvinism: yes, God died on the cross for you, and yes Mary is Mother of God. Theotokos... And all the Christological controversies come to this: you cannot pry it apart.

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    1. non sense - the Logical Positive would describe, and Occam too--descriptively.

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    2. Not science. Popper would say. Meaningful and real and historical, Witt might say.

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    3. What's the issue? Sam would say.

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  48. Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games". I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? - Don’t say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games'" - but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look! … And this is just how one might explain to someone what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way. - I do not, however, mean by this that he is supposed to see in those examples that common thing which I - for some reason - was unable to express; but that he is now to employ those examples in a particular way. Here giving examples is not an indirect means of explaining - in default of something better. For any general definition can be misunderstood. The point is that this is how we play the game. (I mean the language-game with the word "game".) Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) [2]

    "The whole value of an example is lost unless it is historical."
    Robin Collingwood (1916) [3]

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    1. Calvinball. Alice in Wonderland Croquet. Games. Play. What does it mean to be a lost example if it's not historical? In what context is this a profound statement?

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    2. It's a phrase to ponder. When we hear about a "real" story, our ears prick up.

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    3. Real stories abound--you ears must look like Santa's elves. Again: I have no idea what we are discussing. It's a light and poster show. Over my head.

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  49. Wittgenstein allows for no "a priori" knowledge, unlike Kant. Usually I find Popper to be right. He also was the "official opposition" to Vienna circle Logical Positivism.

    An early, tenacious critic was Karl Popper whose 1934 book Logik der Forschung, arriving in English in 1959 as The Logic of Scientific Discovery, directly answered verificationism. Popper heeded the problem of induction as rendering empirical verification logically impossible.[38] And the deductive fallacy of affirming the consequent reveals any phenomenon's capacity to host over one logically possible explanation. Accepting scientific method as hypotheticodeduction, whose inference form is denying the consequent, Popper finds scientific method unable to proceed without falsifiable predictions. Popper thus identifies falsifiability to demarcate not meaningful from meaningless but simply scientific from unscientific—a label not in itself unfavorable.

    Popper finds virtue in metaphysics, required to develop new scientific theories. And an unfalsifiable—thus unscientific, perhaps metaphysical—concept in one era can later, through evolving knowledge or technology, become falsifiable, thus scientific. Popper also found science's quest for truth to rest on values. Popper disparages the pseudoscientific, which occurs when an unscientific theory is proclaimed true and coupled with seemingly scientific method by "testing" the unfalsifiable theory—whose predictions are confirmed by necessity—or when a scientific theory's falsifiable predictions are strongly falsified but the theory is persistently protected by "immunizing stratagems", such as the appendage of ad hoc clauses saving the theory or the recourse to increasingly speculative hypotheses shielding the theory.

    "Popper's scientific epistemology is falsificationism, which finds that no number, degree, and variety of empirical successes can either verify or confirm scientific theory. Falsificationism finds science's aim as corroboration of scientific theory, which strives for scientific realism but accepts the maximal status of strongly corroborated verisimilitude ("truthlikeness"). Explicitly denying the positivist view that all knowledge is scientific, Popper developed the general epistemology critical rationalism, which finds human knowledge to evolve by conjectures and refutations. Popper thus acknowledged the value of the positivist movement, driving evolution of human understanding, but claimed that he had 'killed positivism'".

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    1. Demosthenes practiced rhetoric by putting pebbles in his mouth and declaring to the sea. Mark Twain turned to Henry Jame (whose prose was prolix and dense) and said "Just spit in out in Poppa's hand, Henry.") Tell me how you think Popper valued the positivist movement driving the evolution of human understanding but killed the positivism." Say "these things" for yourself, Brigitte. Posting long quotes doesn't advance an argument--whatever the argument happens to be (which is beyond me: are we still wondering about counter culture? Internecine war among xtian denominations? What?)

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    2. I am not a philosopher, I can't say it differently. Popper was friends with the logical positivist a in the Vienna Circle, but he was their critic, he was their "official opposition". They believed in Scientific verification for all thT is true. Alter some time and ww2, they ended up in Anglo countries and merged into philosophy of science, which, sorry I lied, I did study this, in which Popper again got things right by stressing falsification. If you have an idea, and there is no possibility (Moeglichkeit, Witt would say) to falsify it, then it cannot be said to be science, which can be ok, just don't call it science. Which is sort of closer to where we began. Evolution is not science. Freud is not science. History of religion is not science...

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    3. Who is losing sleep over what's science and what isn't. Religion is not science. Science is not religion. Rationality and Irrationality are antithetical and yet related. etc. I have no quarrel with all these folks you are quoting. If you have a problem with them--spit it out fundamentally.

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    4. Have a theory. Debate it. Don't call it science if it is not science. People are vain.

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  50. Quote started at "An early tenacious critic..."

    Popper distinguishes scientific from unscientific, not meaningful vs. meaningless. I think we can live with that.

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    1. varieties of meaning-to-meaningful experience: within ratios of sense from nonsense, science from religion, aesthetic from ethic. Linguists and information theorists define meaning as a difference that makes a Difference--a purely descriptive definition..

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  51. "Does it mean anything?" Sings the girl from Abba.

    I vowed that I would not marry an Abba lover and then I did. Now he has discovered YouTube and how he can play it on the big TV.

    We need meaning. But how much meaning can it have if it is not tangible? or historical? Abba girl wants commitment.

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    1. Meaning: the differences in our lives that make a difference. They abound. Most are intangible. Meaning itself is intangible: can't touch it. What's touchable is the manifestation, symptom.

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  52. Dawkins says we need to get by without meaning. The universe has no purpose. Logical positivism's whimpering end, but it snarls.

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    1. Your poetic description of logical positivism reveals your own sense of it meaning. Dawkins may be referring to getting by without ultimate or divine meaning--which many apparently can and many apparently can not. That some don't seem to have a need for ultimate and divine meaning is an offense and possibly a threat to those for whom it does. And so: arguing and arguing--true believers vs non. A Gaza strip of hostility and bombardment.

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  53. For sure. It's the denial and cover up that raises my bozone layer--whimpering, snarling.
    .

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  54. To watch or not to watch the soccer game today. Does it mean anything? It is interesting to watch the faces... The defeat, the triumph. A game to see what game is. King if the hill, always?

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  55. I am vain, narcissistic, solipsistic, sealed-in (salved)--calling things relgious which aren't'--calling things scicne which are not. Focusing on what suits my purpose and agenda and ignoring all the rest. A rip-off artist, always violating the whole. Reductionist. I over state, understate. Don't listen good. Watch the soccer game and root for Germany. Ignore the rest. Damaged and damaging Who ever wins makes no matter: the Game will proceed unaltered.

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  56. I can't stand to watch soccer, hockey, football, but maybe can watch a bit of this.

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  57. Imagine that it's believers vs unbelievers; scientists vesus religionists. Some have to bet to make it interesting: have a commitment to one team or the other. Difficult to be indifferent re "sides" and just observe and appreciate the Game In Play. A higher state of minding?

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  58. "What's the name of the game?
    Does it mean anything"

    ABBA

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  59. Angela Merkel is PK. Her father moved voluntarily to East Germany.

    The first World Cup since reunification, that means something to me.

    "Goetze" means idol. Beautiful goal, though, we must say. Happy for him. Sorry for all the little crying Argentinian boys. What lesson will Daddy and son draw from this? What would you say to your boy?

    Lot's of food for thought with such high drama.

    St. Paul draws on the imagery. It is rich.

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  60. Did St Paul root for Germany? Did Jesus? Abba? Did each team pray prior to playing? Did you (really) feel sorry for the little crying Argentinian boys? Were they little? Were they boys? What would I say to my boy? Food for thought. My boy used to tease me, asking "why was I born to lose, Daddy.," He knew it aggravated me. Picked it up from tv program on the Hells Angles, who wore that motto on their motorcycle jackets. Born to Lose is evangelical. How else gain the kingdom? Losing the game.

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  61. St. Paul exhorts us to run like those in an Olympic competition striving for the prize. (Keep your eyes on the prize). -- Even though!!!-- the prize is already yours! Definitely paradox, but it feels right. Complete freedom without stagnation.

    I felt sorry for the boys. I cuddle crying children. It is my highest calling.

    Born to win and lose. In Christ, neither slave, nor free, nor male and female, nor winner nor loser. Only one king of the hill, and he is humble with an easy yoke.

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  62. What about the image, the example: does it have to be historical, and how do things correspond?

    The striving has the experience of real Olympics. My garden, I said the other day, is a paradise to me. Does Paradise illustrate my garden, or vice versa. Which is historical. Can an imaginary paradise tell me about my garden, or does it need to be real, or historical.

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  63. Or do I need to believe in it?

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  64. Your garden represents your Idea of paradise. (Paradise--literally wall of clay.) It is a standing-for, a manifestation, It is not, itself, the idea. Imagine if we quarreled over standing-fors, representations, manifestations and lost sight of the spirit which they represented? Idolatry: a good descriptive term for this, and yet is carries negative connotation when we're all idolators. Some knowing it. Most not (I say, presumptuously)

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  65. Without the experience of the garden, the Idea of garden and paradise is Nonsense.

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  66. With the experience of the garden, the idea becomes a real thing, an object in our circumstance, though intangible per se. It needs the tangible to exist as an idea and thing.

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    1. But the tangible is not the same as the idea: a representation, a map. The word is never what it signifies. This is the origin of idolatry: that we nail down the representation that we experience and see no further than our represenation, or other people's representations.

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  67. The real thing must exist for an idea to exist. Otherwise it is a nonsensical idea.

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    1. Existence precedes essence--watch cry of the existentialists back in the 50's A nonsensical idea is good description, but it carries negative connotations seeing as we privilege sense and not nonsense.-

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  68. Experience and historicity becomes central, but not as a false idol.

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    Replies
    1. What's the difference between a false idol and a not-false idol? What do experience and historicity become central to? I historically experience an upbringing of a tradition that is instructed and informed--but not educed, drawn out, provoked, edified. History and Experience either way.

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  69. I should try and become Wittgenstein's interpreter.

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  70. Spirit & Idea on the one hand. Letter and literal on the other. Without hands, this metaphor is non sense. With hands it is like a monstrum--hosts location for spirit and the literal to meet and mate immaculately.
    .

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  71. Wittgenstein was monumentally smarter than me,
    the Michaels Jordan and Jackson astronomically
    more talented. Trump: more moulah & business
    savvy; Paul Newman: better looking. My cousins
    went to Harvard. My brother-in-law:cardio-vascular
    surgeon. Mother Teresa: spiritual and compassionate.
    (A listener, no doubt). My goodwife: selfishly unselfish
    & thoughtful of others.
    I on the other hand do narcissistic, solipsism,sealed-
    in homeland security, reductive rip -off artistry &
    moving violations against the whole good as
    anyone bar none I bet you 5 dollars. This little
    lite of mine

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  72. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

    Jesus of Nazareth

    Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Legend?

    VDME

    Verbum Domini Manet in Eternum

    Yet dwelt among us. Only he crosses the fixed space between heaven and earth. Beyond philosophy.

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    Replies
    1. Legendary, for sure. Mediator. Boundary Crosser, Trickster, Beyond philsophy, physics, theology, good & evil, literal and metaphor, letter and spirit, lutheran and presbyterian, protestant and catholic.

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    2. What is this word? It is the word that interacts with our situation, a living word. Law and gospel. Sinner or saint, winner or loser, he cares about you.

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    3. A living word is a metaphor for something. It's a more economical way to talk about In the Beginnings than all tha 6 days, dust
      and rib kinf of talk.

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    4. ??? In the beginning speaks into the situation of dark and chaotic.

      Jesus has the living water. The woman was going to argue Mt. Zion vs. Mt. Gerazim. Jesus says, no, no, no. You need me. Your relationships are messes. The disciples come and say: why do you speak with a woman? -- living beginnings with living things.

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    5. I'm not following this. Sorry.

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    6. I didn't get what you said. Back up a little.

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    7. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+4

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  73. "The question of how many angels could dance on the head of a pin was soon being cited by the humanists to demonstrate the stupidity of the scholastic. Luther, too, took an interest in this seemingly abstruse problem, not in order to solve it but in order to point out that faith dwelt in a realm of its own. The question is not as ridiculous as the answer--as with the soul, all we know about angels is what is revealed in Scriptures: 'Everything that is added to faith is certainly only imaginative speculation'--unfounded and thus uncertain, pure invention." (Oberman)

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    1. An epistemological problem--the relationship between matter and non-matter represented by the head of a pin (finite space) and the number of angles that might could occupy it: infinite. Chomsky's transformational grammar posited fixed finite rules which could generate infinite surface sentences.

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    2. Wittgenstein talks about the sentence a lot. Yes, there are words and there is grammar, but the sentences are endless, and CAN be true and clear. (Like his.)

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    3. Angels and pinhead? Endless Sentences some clear and true, some oblique and slant. How to represent the finite infinite relationship was the issue I thought.

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    4. Yes, yes. The finite/ infinite relationship. Unbridgeable from our end, it thought we thought.

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    5. I think we build Towers of Babble in order to bridge finite with infinite with golden God intentions not knowing any better,or knowing better but doing it anyway--compelled.

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    6. But a chasm is fixed. We can't do it.

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    7. Exactly--the point of the Bable origin myth. God confounds the effort.

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  74. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/illiberal-liberalism-church/

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    1. "If you are not getting yourself, your family, and your community ready for what’s coming in post-Christian America, you are wasting time. Falling back on standard conservative categories of thought will not suffice."

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  75. Illiberal liberalism is a dogmatic religion.

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  76. Of course. I argue with atheists, fundamentalists, conservatives, liberals, libertarians--and everyone else.We're all dogmatic and righteous. Mind-set is sealed and protected.Throw rice at rhinos.r

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  77. Question is: are militant atheists or agnostics bordering on the totalitarian in demanding to be everywhere free from religion? We have seen this before. You and Hyde have argued that it should stay safely hidden away in the temple, wherever that is.

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    1. Church - School - State: 3 modes, 3 incommensurate values--appropriately hostile. They complement if not collapsed, conflated, confused. The militant atheists I know want state equality with theists. I don't argue "safely hidden"--but find profane and profanity a literal description of church in state affairs. Didn't know Hyde shared this with me.

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    2. There was this one paragraph, which I thought absurd, and I have mentioned it once. He pulls in the European old style market place with the church at one end. He says: if the members have been taught properly about the mystery of the sacred, then it does not get carried out into the marketplace. This is bizarre. In Europe we have church in school, on the streets, and where ever we want, unless we are under some sort of totalitarianism, and then the problem is as always, that the state wants to sit in the sanctuary. This is not what was supposed to happen. The stifling of the church's witness is not supportive of society. It is a worrisome development.

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    3. There's your "supposed" at work again.

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    4. This is what Must Not happen. Better?

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  78. The living water/ word does speak into current situations and relationships. It bubbles through and demands to be heard.

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    Replies
    1. So to speak. Slam poetry and traditional--Whitman described it as his barbaric yawp. .Charisma: when the word is alive.

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  79. If you silence these people the stones will speak. Jesus said.

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    1. As wise as doves, as harmless as serpents. "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

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  80. Maybe we shouldn't philosophize on the internet either. Watch out each for his own hypocrisy.

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  81. Is this philosophizing? not the same as prayer--profane. Schooling maybe. School and Be Schooled

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  82. We began every school year with church services. I went to Catholic school. When they said their Hail Mary's during May, I stayed seated. It was no big deal. Those who want to quote Jesus to shut up Christians are THE hypocrites. Top of the heap.

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  83. Public school begins with church service, too, and the pastor comes in to teach religion class. Except under Hitler, then the pastor can teach nowhere. Same with communism--big church buildings being dismantled as we speak.

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  84. Same under Islam: convert or die or pay extra taxes.

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  85. hypocrite - actor, one who plays a role, answers... I am.

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  86. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/06/25/christie-blatchford-what-if-toronto-mans-not-a-terrorist-but-the-middle-of-the-road-muslim-family-says-he-is/

    Christie Blatchford is one of our best writers. Very smart.

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    Replies
    1. http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/06/video-benghazi-panel-turns-ugly-after-muslim-woman-asks-about-peacefu (scroll down to vido of panel and the peaceful Islam females question and the reply it provokes)e

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    2. The link does not work, maybe because there is a bit missing in the end.

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  87. I shall. I have been put to morning watering and have to run for a weigh in. I lost 10 lbs last month on low carb, high protein, low fat, counting calories on My Fitness App. That app. is an incredible help. You know all your totals in all departments at all times, for the day. Recommend it to anyone. Even my daughter who is in great shape puts everything into her cell-phone...

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  88. Good work. Good luck. Techno-Logos

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  89. Thanks. I feel lighter on my feet, though mostly in the summer I like to ride my bicycle. During the past winter I learned race walking. And Egoscue Yoga, of course, as has been described.

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/

    You might like it, too.

    For some inexplicable reason, I am still pushing through the Wittgenstein.

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  90. He's a challenge. Read a biography on him back in the 80's--remember finding it engaging but can't recall details. I"m impressed with all the reading youi do. I'd call you a Grail Seeker except you've already found it. At this stag, I think it's not what we know that counts (having it all at hand) but whether we can put it in play--and that's how I try to frame my courses. The back & forthm the awareness of language, metaphor, (controlling metaphors), assumptions. Not to get anything right or wrong--but to be watching and getting good at the converse action.

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  91. Contrast Wittgenstein's indecipherable stuff with that of a man who writes as logically convincing and beautifully as G.K.Chesterton. Both want to be systematic, in a way. One is incomprehensible, the other touches us deeply and even gives great belly laughs. I like them both, but Wittgenstein strikes me a bit as tragic and forlorn. Chesterton writes from his merriment and gratitude. Wittgenstein writes from a love of mathematics, and maybe a love of grammar. He probably had the same kind of education I had, memorizing and translating, and algebra at an early age for those who made it into higher school stream. Chesterton wrote in the new lingua franca the way it popped into his head, upsetting all sorts of apple carts and turning things upside down.

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  92. It is ironic that Wittgenstein with main idea of having a system for language and logic that can be completely symbolic, and practically universal, turns out so unreadable and untranslatable.

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  93. Extremely dull. I thought Hyde, for the interesting subject matter had he set himself, was also a bit dull. About tricksters, but no humor, irony, or self-deprecation.

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