If philosophy were a game, Wittgenstein rewrote the rulebook. Then he tore it up halfway through and told us the game was the thing itself.
“Don’t ask for the meaning; ask for the use.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
Language Game, the third card in my Critical Theory parody set, isn’t just homage; it’s confession. Wittgenstein is among my top five philosophers, and this card embodies why. His idea that ‘meaning is use’ unhooked language from metaphysics and tethered it to life – to the messy, unpredictable business of how humans actually speak.
The card’s text reads: Choose one: Counter target statement; or reframe it as metaphor.
At first glance, it sounds like a standard spell from Magic: The Gathering – a blue card, naturally, since blue is the colour of intellect, deceit, and control. But beneath the parody is an epistemic mirror.
To “counter” a statement is to engage in the analytic impulse – to negate, clarify, define. To “reframe it as metaphor” is the continental alternative – reinterpret, play, deconstruct. These are not two distinct acts of philosophy but the alternating heartbeat of all discourse. Every argument, every essay, every tweet oscillates between contradiction and reframing.
The sorcery lies in recognising that both are linguistic manoeuvres within the same game. Meaning is not fixed in the words themselves but in how they’re used – by whom, in what context, and to what end. Wittgenstein’s point was brutally simple: there’s no hidden substance behind language, only a living practice of moves and counter-moves.
The Shattered Face
The artwork visualises this idea: speech breaking into shards, thought fragmenting as it leaves the mouth. Meaning disintegrates even as it’s formed. Every utterance is an act of creation and destruction, coherence and collapse.
I wanted the card to look like a concept tearing itself apart whilst trying to communicate, a perfect visual for the paradox of language. The cubist angles hint at structure, but the open mouth betrays chaos. It’s communication as combustion.
Wittgenstein’s Echo
Wittgenstein once wrote, ‘Philosophy leaves everything as it is’. It sounds passive, almost nihilistic, until one realises what he meant: philosophy doesn’t change the world by building new systems; it changes how we see what’s already there.
He was the great anti-system builder, a man suspicious of his own intellect, who saw in language both the limits of thought and the infinite playground of meaning. He dismantled metaphysics not through scepticism but through observation: watch how words behave, and they’ll tell you what they mean.
In that spirit, Language Game is less an argument than an invitation – to watch the mechanics of speech, to see how our statements perform rather than merely represent.
Personal Reflection
Wittgenstein earns a place in my top five because he dissolves the boundaries that most philosophers erect. He offers no comforting totalities, no grand narratives, no moral architectures. Just language, and us inside it, flailing beautifully.
His work aligns with my larger project on the insufficiency of language – its inability to capture the real, yet its irresistible compulsion to try. Wittgenstein knew that words are our most sophisticated form of failure, and he loved them anyway.
To play Language Game is to remember that communication isn’t about arriving at truth but about keeping meaning in motion. Every conversation is a temporary alliance against silence.
The card’s instruction remains both playful and tragic: Counter target statement; or reframe it as metaphor.
The Illusion of Clarity in a World of Cognitive Fog
Apologies in advance for this Logic 101 posting. Reason—our once-proud torch in the darkness, now more like a flickering lighter in a hurricane of hot takes and LinkedIn thought-leadership. The modern mind, bloated on TED Talks and half-digested Wikipedia articles, tosses around terms like “inductive” and “deductive” as if they’re interchangeable IKEA tools. So let us pause, sober up, and properly inspect these three venerable pillars of human inference: deduction, induction, and abduction—each noble, each flawed, each liable to betray you like a Greco-Roman tragedy.
Video: This post was prompted by this short by MiniPhilosophy.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
Deduction: The Tyrant of Certainty
Deduction is the purest of the lot, the high priest of logic. It begins with a general premise and guarantees a specific conclusion, as long as you don’t cock up the syllogism. Think Euclid in a toga, laying down axioms like gospel.
Example:
All humans are mortal.
Socrates is human.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Perfect. Crisp. Unassailable. Unless, of course, your premise is bollocks. Deduction doesn’t check its ingredients—it just cooks with whatever it’s given. Garbage in, garbage out.
Strength: Valid conclusions from valid premises. Weakness: Blind to empirical falsity. You can deduce nonsense from nonsense and still be logically sound.
Induction: The Gambler’s Gospel
Induction is the philosopher’s lottery ticket: generalising from particulars. Every swan I’ve seen is white, ergo all swans must be white. Until, of course, Australia coughs up a black one and wrecks your little Enlightenment fantasy.
Example:
The sun rose today.
It rose yesterday.
It has risen every day I’ve been alive.
Therefore, the sun will rise tomorrow.
Touching, isn’t it? Unfortunately, induction doesn’t prove anything—it suggests probability. David Hume had an existential breakdown over this. Entire centuries of Western philosophy spiralled into metaphysical despair. And yet, we still rely on it to predict weather, markets, and whether that dodgy lasagna will give us food poisoning.
Strength: Empirically rich and adaptive. Weakness: One exception detonates the generalisation. Induction is only ever as good as the sample size and your luck.
Abduction: Sherlock Holmes’ Drug of Choice
Abduction is the inference to the best explanation. The intellectual equivalent of guessing what made the dog bark at midnight while half-drunk and barefoot in the garden.
Example:
The lawn is wet.
It probably rained.
It could be a garden sprinkler. Or a hose. Or divine intervention. But we bet on rain because it’s the simplest, most plausible explanation. Pragmatic, yes. But not immune to deception.
Strength: Useful in messy, real-world contexts. Weakness: Often rests on a subjective idea of “best,” which tends to mean “most convenient to my prejudices.”
The Modern Reasoning Crisis: Why We’re All Probably Wrong
Our contemporary landscape has added new layers of complexity to these already dubious tools. Social media algorithms function as induction machines on steroids, drawing connections between your click on a pasta recipe and your supposed interest in Italian real estate. Meanwhile, partisan echo chambers have perfected the art of deductive reasoning from absolutely bonkers premises.
Consider how we navigate information today:
We encounter a headline that confirms our worldview
We accept it without scrutiny (deductive failure)
We see similar headlines repeatedly (inductive trap)
We conclude our worldview is objectively correct (abductive collapse)
And thus, the modern reasoning loop is complete—a perfect system for being confidently incorrect while feeling intellectually superior.
Weakness by Analogy: The Reasoning Café
Imagine a café.
Deduction is the customer who checks the menu and confidently orders “Soup of the Day,” because the chalkboard says “Today’s Soup is Tomato,” and she trusts chalkboards.
Induction is the one who has had tomato soup every Wednesday for months and assumes it’ll be tomato today again—until it isn’t, and now he’s wearing bisque.
Abduction sees the waiter carrying bowls of red liquid to every table and infers it’s probably tomato soup, orders it, and gets… gazpacho. Ice-cold disappointment.
All three are trying to reason. Only one might get lunch.
The Meta-Problem: Reasoning About Reasoning
The true joke is this: we’re using these flawed reasoning tools to evaluate our reasoning tools. It’s like asking a drunk person to judge their own sobriety test. The very mechanisms we use to detect faulty reasoning are themselves subject to the same faults.
This explains why debates about critical thinking skills typically devolve into demonstrations of their absence. We’re all standing on intellectual quicksand while insisting we’ve found solid ground.
Conclusion: Reason Is Not a Guarantee, It’s a Wager
None of these modalities offer omniscience. Deduction only shines when your axioms aren’t ridiculous. Induction is forever haunted by Hume’s skepticism and the next black swan. Abduction is basically educated guessing dressed up in tweed.
Yet we must reason. We must argue. We must infer—despite the metaphysical vertigo.
The tragedy isn’t that these methods fail. The tragedy is when people believe they don’t.
Perhaps the wisest reasoners are those who understand the limitations of their cognitive tools, who approach conclusions with both confidence and humility. Who recognize that even our most cherished beliefs are, at best, sophisticated approximations of a reality we can never fully grasp.
So reason on, fellow thinkers. Just don’t be too smug about it.
The contestation over the definition of probability is alive and well—like a philosophical zombie that refuses to lie down and accept the tranquilliser of consensus. Despite over three centuries of intense mathematical, philosophical, and even theological wrangling, no single, universally accepted definition reigns supreme. Instead, we have a constellation of rival interpretations, each staking its claim on the epistemological turf, each clutching its own metaphysical baggage.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
Let us survey the battlefield:
1. Classical Probability (Laplacean Determinism in a Tuxedo)
This old warhorse defines probability as the ratio of favourable outcomes to possible outcomes, assuming all outcomes are equally likely. The problem? That assumption is doing all the heavy lifting, like a butler carrying a grand piano up five flights of stairs. It’s circular: we define probability using equiprobability, which itself presumes a notion of probability. Charming, but logically suspect.
2. Frequentist Probability (The Empiricist’s Fantasy)
Here, probability is the limit of relative frequencies as the number of trials tends to infinity. This gives us the illusion of objectivity—but only in a Platonic realm where we can conduct infinite coin tosses without the coin disintegrating or the heat death of the universe intervening. Also, it tells us nothing about singular cases. What’s the probability this specific bridge will collapse? Undefined, says the frequentist, helpfully.
3. Bayesian Probability (Subjectivity Dressed as Rigor)
Bayesians treat probability as a degree of belief—quantified plausibility updated with evidence. This is useful, flexible, and epistemically honest, but also deeply subjective. Two Bayesians can start with wildly different priors and, unless carefully constrained, remain in separate probabilistic realities. It’s like epistemology for solipsists with calculators.
4. Propensity Interpretation (The Ontology of Maybes)
Karl Popper and his ilk proposed that probability is a tendency or disposition of a physical system to produce certain outcomes. Sounds scientific, but try locating a “propensity” in a particle collider—it’s a metaphysical ghost, not a measurable entity. Worse, it struggles with repeatability and relevance outside of controlled environments.
5. Logical Probability (A Sober Attempt at Rationality)
Think of this as probability based on logical relations between propositions—à la Keynes or Carnap. It aims to be objective without being empirical. The problem? Assigning these logical relations is no easier than choosing priors in Bayesianism, and just as subjective when it comes to anything meaty.
6. Quantum Probability (Schrödinger’s Definition)
In quantum mechanics, probability emerges from the squared modulus of a wave function—so this is where physics says, “Shut up and calculate.” But this doesn’t solve the philosophical issue—it just kicks the can into Hilbert space. Interpretations of quantum theory (Copenhagen? Many Worlds?) embed different philosophies of probability, so the contestation merely changes battlegrounds.
Current Status: War of Attrition
There is no universal agreement, and likely never will be. Probability is used successfully across the sciences, economics, AI, and everyday reasoning—but the fact that these wildly different interpretations all “work” suggests that the concept is operationally robust yet philosophically slippery. Like money, love, or art, we use it constantly but define it poorly.
In short: the contestation endures because probability is not one thing—it is a shape-shifting chimera that serves multiple masters. Each interpretation captures part of the truth, but none hold it entire. Philosophers continue to argue, mathematicians continue to formalise, and practitioners continue to deploy it as if there were no disagreement at all.
And so the probability of this contest being resolved any time soon? About zero. Or one. Depending on your interpretation.
Medical doctors, lawyers, and judges have been the undisputed titans of professional authority for centuries. Their expertise, we are told, is sacrosanct, earned through gruelling education, prodigious memory, and painstaking application of established knowledge. But peel back the robes and white coats, and you’ll find something unsettling: a deep reliance on rote learning—an intellectual treadmill prioritising recall over reasoning. In an age where artificial intelligence can memorise and synthesise at scale, this dependence on predictable, replicable processes makes these professions ripe for automation.
Rote Professions in AI’s Crosshairs
AI thrives in environments that value pattern recognition, procedural consistency, and brute-force memory—the hallmarks of medical and legal practice.
Medicine: The Diagnosis Factory Despite its life-saving veneer, medicine is largely a game of matching symptoms to diagnoses, dosing regimens, and protocols. Enter an AI with access to the sum of human medical knowledge: not only does it diagnose faster, but it also skips the inefficiencies of human memory, emotional bias, and fatigue. Sure, we still need trauma surgeons and such, but diagnosticians are so yesterday’s news. Why pay a six-figure salary to someone recalling pharmacology tables when AI can recall them perfectly every time? Future healthcare models are likely to see Medical Technicians replacing high-cost doctors. These techs, trained to gather patient data and operate alongside AI diagnostic systems, will be cheaper, faster, and—ironically—more consistent.
Law: The Precedent Machine Lawyers, too, sit precariously on the rote-learning precipice. Case law is a glorified memory game: citing the right precedent, drafting contracts based on templates, and arguing within frameworks so well-trodden that they resemble legal Mad Libs. AI, with its infinite recall and ability to synthesise case law across jurisdictions, makes human attorneys seem quaintly inefficient. The future isn’t lawyers furiously flipping through books—it’s Legal Technicians trained to upload case facts, cross-check statutes, and act as intermediaries between clients and the system. The $500-per-hour billable rate? A relic of a pre-algorithmic era.
Judges: Justice, Blind and Algorithmic The bench isn’t safe, either. Judicial reasoning, at its core, is rule-based logic applied with varying degrees of bias. Once AI can reliably parse case law, evidence, and statutes while factoring in safeguards for fairness, why retain expensive and potentially biased judges? An AI judge, governed by a logic verification layer and monitored for compliance with established legal frameworks, could render verdicts untainted by ego or prejudice. Wouldn’t justice be more blind without a human in the equation?
The Techs Will Rise
Replacing professionals with AI doesn’t mean removing the human element entirely. Instead, it redefines roles, creating new, lower-cost positions such as Medical and Legal Technicians. These workers will:
Collect and input data into AI systems.
Act as liaisons between AI outputs and human clients or patients.
Provide emotional support—something AI still struggles to deliver effectively.
The shift also democratises expertise. Why restrict life-saving diagnostics or legal advice to those who can afford traditional professionals when AI-driven systems make these services cheaper and more accessible?
But Can AI Handle This? A Call for Logic Layers
AI critics often point to hallucinations and errors as proof of its limitations, but this objection is shortsighted. What’s needed is a logic layer: a system that verifies whether the AI’s conclusions follow rationally from its inputs.
In law, this could ensure AI judgments align with precedent and statute.
In medicine, it could cross-check diagnoses against the DSM, treatment protocols, and patient data.
A second fact-verification layer could further bolster reliability, scanning conclusions for factual inconsistencies. Together, these layers would mitigate the risks of automation while enabling AI to confidently replace rote professionals.
Resistance and the Real Battle Ahead
Predictably, the entrenched elites of medicine, law, and the judiciary will resist these changes. After all, their prestige and salaries are predicated on the illusion that their roles are irreplaceable. But history isn’t on their side. Industries driven by memorisation and routine application—think bank tellers, travel agents, and factory workers—have already been disrupted by technology. Why should these professions be exempt?
The real challenge lies not in whether AI can replace these roles but in public trust and regulatory inertia. The transformation will be swift and irreversible once safeguards are implemented and AI earns confidence.
Critical Thinking: The Human Stronghold
Professions that thrive on unstructured problem-solving, creativity, and emotional intelligence—artists, philosophers, innovators—will remain AI-resistant, at least for now. But the rote professions, with their dependency on standardisation and precedent, have no such immunity. And that is precisely why they are AI’s lowest-hanging fruit.
It’s time to stop pretending that memorisation is intelligence, that precedent is innovation, or that authority lies in a gown or white coat. AI isn’t here to make humans obsolete; it’s here to liberate us from the tyranny of rote. For those willing to adapt, the future looks bright. For the rest? The machines are coming—and they’re cheaper, faster, and better at your job.
The Cognitive Process Flow Model illustrates how we process the phenomenal world. It’s reductionist and is missing aspects because it is just a back-of-the-napkin sketch. I created it because I uttered, “I can model it for you”. And so I did.
EDIT: I’ve updated the model slightly as the article head image, but the copy content refers to the first draft.
My response was to a person making the claim, that all you need to facts and logic prevails. Rather than restate the argument, I’ll just walk through the diagramme.
There’s meta information to set it up. We are subjective entities in the world. We have a sense-perception apparatus as we exist in it. Countless events occur in this world. We recognise only a few of them within our limited range, though technology expands this range in various ways.
Most of us interact in the world. Some are less ambulatory, so the world visits them. Some have sense-perception deficits whilst others have cognitive deficits. My point is not to capture every edge and corner case. This is just a generalised model.
All models are wrong, but some are useful.
—George Box
It starts with an event. Events occur ceaselessly. In our small portion of the world and elsewhere. For the purpose of the model, the first thing that happens is an event catches our attention. We might notice a shape, a colour, or a movement; we might hear a sound, smell an aroma, feel a sensation, or taste something.
A pre-emotion, pre-logic function serves to process these available inputs. Perhaps, you hear a report on anthropogenic climate change or read something about a political candidate. This emotional filter will police sensory inputs and unconsciously or preconsciously determine if you will react to the initial stimulus. If not, you’ll continue in an attention-seeking loop. Not that kind of attention-seeking.
As my dialogue was about the presentation of facts, our next stop will be logical evaluation. Does this make sense to us, or can we otherwise make it? This is a process in itself. I’ll assume here that it requires little elaboration. Instead, I’ll focus on the operating environment.
Our logical processes are coloured by past experiences and tainted by cognitive biases and deficits. We may also trigger the calling of additional facts through past experiences or the current engagement.
We’ll process these fragments and reach some logical conclusion. But we’re not done. We take this intermediate conclusion and run it through more emotional processing. Cognitive biases come back into play. If the event conforms with your past experiences and cognitive biases, we may run it through a cognitive dissonance routine. To be honest, this probably is part of the emotional reconciliation process, but I’ve drawn it here, so I’ll let it be. In this case, it’s just a filter. If it happens to conform to our belief system, it will pass unfettered; otherwise, it will be squared with our beliefs. Again, this leads me to believe it’s a subcomponent of emotional reconciliation. I’ll update the chart later.
In any case, we’ll end at Final Acceptance. This acceptance may be that we accept or reject the logic, but we arrive at an opinion that gets catalogued with the rest of them. Some may be elevated to facts or truths in the epistemological hierarchy. Although an end marker is identified, it’s really a wait state for the next event. Rinse and repeat until death.
I’ll update this presently. Be on the lookout. It could include more dimensions and interactions, but that might have to wait until version 3.
Meantime, does this feel right to you? Did it even get your attention?
An Example: Anthropogenic Climate Change
Let’s wrap up with an example. I’ll use climate change. An article comes into your attention field, and you have an interest in these things, so it passes through the emotional filter. If your propensity for these articles is high, it might race to the next stage.
You read the article, and it contains some facts—rather, it contains claims for evaluation. To do this, you’ll recall past experiences and cognitive biases are always lying in wait. You may have to look for new facts to add to the mix. These will have to take a similar route past your attention gatekeeper and emotional sidekick.
If you are already predisposed that climate change is a hoax, these facts will filter through that lens—or vice versa.
When all of this is resolved, you’ll have arrived at a conclusion—perhaps we’ll call it a proto-conclusion. It hasn’t been set yet.
You are still going to introspect emotionally and decide if this is a position you want to hold. Perhaps, you feel that climate change is a hoax but this doesn’t jive with that position. Here, you’ll either accept these facts and flip a bit to a sceptical believer or cognitive dissonance will kick in and ensure your sense of the world isn’t thrown off kilter. You may update your belief system to include this datum for future assessments.
Now we are ready for final acceptance. You can now express your established opinion. If the net event is to counter that acceptance, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
The word dialetheism comes from the Greek δι (di- ‘twice’) and ἀλήθεια (alḗtheia ‘truth’). It’s the view that there are some statements which are both true and false. In other words, it’s the view that there can be a true statement whose negation is also true. In the literature, these statements are called “true contradictions” or (to use Graham Priest’s neologism) dialetheia.
Surfing the Web, I happened upon a blog wherein Wintery Knight riffed on a conversation about morality with an atheist millennial man. My interest was piqued, so I scanned it and then read it. I scanned the About page, and it’s apparent that we hold diametrically opposed worldviews, and that’s OK.
As a result of the encounter with this millennial man, the post intends to answer the question: How could I show him that happy feelings are not a good basis for morality? But let’s step back a bit.
In the words of the author, ‘I asked him to define morality, and he said that morality was feeling good, and helping other people to feel good.’ Here’s the first problem: Although a conversation about morality may have occurred between the author and an atheist millennial man, the post is not in fact a reaction to Millennial morality. Rather, it’s of the respondent’s dim characterisation of what morality is (whether for a theist or an atheist). His reply that morality is ‘feeling good, and helping other people to feel good’ sounds more like hedonism and compassion. The author does pick up on the Utilitarian bent of the response but fails to disconnect this response from the question. The result is a strawman response to one person’s hamfisted rendition of morality. The author provides no additional context for the conversation nor whether an attempt to correct the foundational definition.
A quick Google search yields what should by now be a familiar definition of morality: principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.
morality (noun) : principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour
Oxford Languages
Clearly, conflating utility with rightness and wrongness, with goodness and badness, is an obvious dead-end at the start. This said, I could just stop typing. Yet, I’ll continue—at least for a while longer.
At the top of the article is a meme image that reads ‘When I hear someone act like they’re proud of themselves for creating their own moral guidelines and sticking to them’.
Natalie Portman sports an awkward facial expression and a sarcastic clap. Under the image is a line of copy: If you define morality as “whatever I want to do” then you’ll always be “moral”, which is tautological, but a bit of a non-sequitur to the rest, so I’ll leave it alone.
Let’s stop to regard this copy for a few moments but without going too deep. Let’s ignore the loose grammar and the concept of pride. I presume the focus of the author to be on the individually fabricated morals (read: ethical guidelines or rules) and that the fabricator follows through with them.
That this person follows through on their own rules is more impressive than the broken New Year’s resolutions of so many and is a certainly better track record than most people with supposed religious convictions.
New Years’ Resolutions
First, all morals are fabricated—his morals or your morals. And you can believe that these goods came from God or gods or nature or were just always present awaiting humans to embody them, but that doesn’t change the point.
Let’s presume that at least some of his morals don’t comport with the authors because they are borne out of compassion. Since we’ve already established precedence for cherry-picking, allow me to side-step the hedonistic aspects and instead focus on the compassionate aspects. Would this be offensive to the author? Isn’t, in fact, in Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31, the do unto others Golden Rule edict, is a call for compassion—at least sympathy if not empathy?
After a quick jab at abortion (tl; dr: abortion is bad) taking the scenic route to articulate the point that atheists typically don’t think of unborn children as people, apparently without fully grasping the concept of zygotes and gametes. The author then confuses the neutral notion of a probabilistic outcome with accidents, having negative connotations—as if I flip a coin, the result is an accident. Let’s ignore this passive-aggressive hostility and move on. Let’s also forgive the flippant—or at least facile—articulation of biological evolutionary processes as ‘the strong survive while the weak die’. We can let it slide since what is meant by strong in this context is wide open.
child (noun) : a young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of majority
Oxford Languages
The author continues with a claim that ‘you aren’t going to be able to generate a moral standard that includes compassion for weak unborn children on that scenario’. This feels like an unsubstantiated claim. Is this true? Who knows. Some people have compassion for all sorts of things from puppies to pandas without having some belief in rights. Some people like Peter Singer argues that rights should be extended to all species, and all humans should be vegans. I wonder if the author can live up to this moral high watermark. Maybe so. Probably doesn’t mix linen and wool because it’s the right thing to do.
“If the rule is “let’s do what makes us happy”, and the unborn child can’t voice her opinion, then the selfish grown-ups win.” This is our next stop. This is a true statement, so let’s tease it a bit. Animals are slaughtered and eaten, having no voice. Pet’s are kept captive, having no voice. Trees are felled, having no voice. Land is absconded from vegetation and Animalia—even other humans. Stolen from unborn humans for generations to come. Lots of people have no voice.
People are into countries and time and space. What about the converse situation? Where is the responsibility for having the child who gains a voice and doesn’t want this life? Does it matter that two consenting adults choose to have a child, so it’s OK? Doesn’t the world have enough people? What if two consenting adults choose to rob a bank? I know I don’t have to explicitly make the point that once the child is thrown into this world, the voice is told to shut up if it asks to exit or even tries to exit without permission. Unless circumstances arise to snuff out the little bugger as an adult.
Finally, the author is warmed up and decides to focus first on fatherhood. The question posed was whether the interlocutor thought that fatherlessness harmed children, to which the response was no.
Spoiler alert: The author is toting a lot of baggage on this fatherhood trip. Before we even get to the father, the child, or the family, there is a presumption of a Capitalist, income-based, market economy. Father means the adult male at the head of a nuclear family with a mum (or perhaps a mother; mum may be too informal), likely with 2 kids and half a pet. The child is expected to also participate in this constructed economy—the imagined ‘right’ social arrangement. It goes without saying that I feel this is a bum deal and shit arrangement, but I’ll defer to pieces already and yet to be written here. But if fathers are the cause of this ‘Modern’ society, fuck ’em and the horses they rode in on.
She asks him, if a system of sexual rules based on “me feeling good, and other people around me feeling good”, was likely to protect children. Evidently, he was silent, but here you can already determine that she unnecessarily links sex to procreation. And reflecting on a few paragraphs back, how is forcing a child (without asking) to be born and then told to become a wage slave or perish not violent and cruel?
(Self-guidance: Calm down, man. You can get through this.)
So the question is surreptitiously about procreative sex. By extension, if the couple can’t procreate for whatever myriad reasons, it’s OK? Sounds like it? Premenstrual, menopausal, oral, anal, same-sex coupling is all OK in this book. Perhaps, the author is more open-minded than I am given credit for. Not all humans are fertile, sex with plants and animals won’t result in procreation. A lot of folks would call this author kinky or freaky. Not my cup of tea, but I’m not judging. Besides, I’ve read that book—though shalt not judge. I’m gonna play it safe. And they couldn’t print it if it wasn’t true.
Spoiler Alert: Jesus dies at the end.
Seeking credibility, the author cites Bloomberg, as Centre to Centre-Left organisation as Far-Left. Clearly another red flag. Excuse me, your bias is showing. This piece is likely written for choir preaching, so we’ll take the penalty and move along.
A quick jab at the bête noire of ‘Big Government’ facilitating idle hands and, presumably genitals, to play. The idle rich as Croesus folks are idols to behold. At least I can presume she opposes military spending and armed aggression on the grounds of harm, so we’ve got common ground there. They’re probably an advocate of defunding the police, though by another name. so there’s another common platform. It just goes to show: all you need to do is talk to ameliorate differences. We’re making good headway. Let’s keep up the momentum.
Wait, what? We need to preserve a Western Way? I was shooting for something more Zen. Jesus was a Westerner—being from Bethlehem and all. (That’s in Israel—probably on the Westside.)
White Jesus from the Middle East
No worries. Just a minor setback—a speedbump. It’s just a flesh wound. But we’ve pretty much reached the end. A little banter about some other studies. There’s an impartial citation from the Institute for Family Studies on cohabitation they beg the question and employs circular logic. And another from the non-partisan Heritage Foundation finds that dads who live with their children spend more time with them. How profound. I’d fund that study.
And it’s over. What happened? In the end, all I got out of it is ‘I don’t like it when you make up morals’. You need to adopt the same moral code I’ve adopted.
AJ Ayer – Emotivism
Where was I? Oh yeah. Fathers. So these people don’t mean generic fathers. They mean fathers who subscribe to their worldview. In their magical realm, these fathers are not abusive to their mothers or children; these fathers are not rip-roaring alcoholics; these fathers are the dads you see on the telly.
Suspiciously absent is the plotline where the fathers are ripped from their families through systematic racism and incarcerated as if they didn’t want to be there for their children. And this isn’t discussing whether it’s an issue of fathers or an issue of money. It isn’t discussing whether someone else might serve as a proxy for this role. Indeed, there is nothing magical about fathers unless you live in a fantasy world.
How does one justify reason without reason? Isn’t this just circular reasoning— circular logic? Can one justify reason without employing reason? Can there be logic without reason?
The Age of Enlightenment is simultaneously the Age of Reason. Reason is the best path forward, and yet one can’t even board the train without a predisposition toward reason at the start.
This reminds me of the troubles the logical positivists encountered by claiming that everything need to be falsifiable, and yet this claim could not be falsified. It’s Hume’s ought problem.
One could employ empiricism, but can one arrive there alogically?
Is there a term for ‘not logical’ without the same baggage as illogical?
Alogical
Antilogical
Contralogical
Counterlogical
Delogical
Dislogical
Inlogical
Mislogical
Nonlogical
Oblogical
Unlogical
For example, a work of art is not (necessarily) logical, but neither is it illogical; this feels like improper usage. So, what prefix modifier would one employ to communicate ‘not within the sphere of logic’ in shorthand? Or is it just ‘not logical‘. That doesn’t seem quite right either.
Any system built on the presumption of widespread capacity for reason is bound to fail. The ability for most humans to ‘reason’ is clearly abridged and homoeopathic. And this is before one factors in cognitive deficits and biases. This is separate from sense perception limitations.
Nietzsche was right to separate the masters from the herd, but there are those in both classes with these limited capacities, though in different proportions.
People are predictably irrational
In economics, we have to define reason so narrowly just to create support the barebones argument that humans are rational actors—that given a choice, a person will take the option that leaves them relatively better off—, and even with this definition, we meet disappointment because people are predictably irrational, so they make choices that violates this Utilitarian principle. And it only gets worse when the choices require deeper knowledge or insights.
Democracy is destined to fail
This is why democracy is a destined to fail—it requires deeper knowledge or insights. The common denominator is people, most of whom are fed a steady diet of the superiority of humans over other species and lifeforms and who don’t question the self-serving hubris. They don’t even effectively evaluate their place in the system and their lack of contribution to it.
To the masters, who are aware of the limited abilities of the herd to reason, it seems like hunting fish in a barrel. If we convince the herd that they have some control over their destinies, that’s as far as it needs to go, but among the masters, there are subclasses, so people in these factions are also vying for position, so each employs rhetoric to persuade herd factions.
No one is sheltered from the limitations of reason
To the people out reading and writing blogs and such, confirmation bias notwithstanding, they may more likely to be ‘reasonable’ or able to reason, but try as they may, no one is sheltered from the limitations of reason.
I’ve been accused of being hyper-logical and aloof, and I self-identify as a logical intellectual. This noted, for humans—myself included—emotion precedes logic. Every time. Logic is applied to rationalise our emotional response. This ‘logic’ is based somewhat on classical logic and otherwise on environmental factors. This is one reason that rhetorical persuasion is so effective. It doesn’t loose sight of the emotional element—pathos—whilst retaining logical and ethical notions—logos and ethos.
Stoic dude, Marcus Aurelius
I’ve been accused of being a stoic and Star Trek’s Mr Spock—devoid of emotion—, and on one level I don’t feel that I am run by emotions’ but on the other hand, I likely am. It’s just I can rhetorically convince myself to the contrary.
I find that highly illogical
Epistemologically, how can I know this? I can’t. But I think that this fits into Daniel Kahneman’s 2-system approach, and system 1, the heuristic element, is the first responder to all incidences. System 2, the analytical element often isn’t even alerted. For people of my persuasion, we intentionally invoke system 2, but this is always after system 1 has evaluated the situation. I highly recommend Kahneman’s Thinking Fast & Slow as an introduction to these systems and how they deal (and don’t deal) with cognitive biases.
If I had a dollar
This may be why Emotivism makes sense categorically, as Truth is just another notion wrought from emotion. It is also how humans convince themselves that things like justice and fairness can exist.
And, so, does this post have another point to make? Am I going to elaborate? It seems a bit short. By my own admission, nope.
Philosophics 