Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • False Memory

    Yesterday I intended to print a document, loaded the paper tray, and then got sidetracked by a phone call.  I forgot about the print job. This morning I falsely remembered having printed the document and then wasted time searching for it. 

    What philosophical juice might one squeeze from this lemon?

    1) Not all memories could be false. If all memories were false, then one could not know, using memory, that some memories are false. But I do know, by memory, the truth that some memories are false. Therefore, it is not possible that all memories be false. 

    2) If presentism is the view that only temporally present events exist, and that wholly past and wholly future events do not exist, then the above example shows that presentism thus defined cannot be true. For I now veridically remember yesterday's intention to print the document, yesterday's loading of the tray, and yesterday's phone call. These events occurred, and I now know they occurred; hence they cannot now be nothing.


  • If White Supremacy is Everywhere . . .

    . . . why is it so hard to find a Latin mass?


  • Driver or Passenger?

    Are you the driver of your vehicle or merely a passenger? Who is in control of route and destination? Body or soul? Which is just along for the ride?


  • How Low Can We Sink?

    Seen at SOTU 2023 as worn by Senator Ed Markey, Massachusetts Democrat:

    Sen. Ed Markey shows off the cool 'I Heart Abortion' pin Planned ...

    For a long time now, the Democrats have been the abortion party. But under the 'leadership' of the 'devout Catholic,' Joe Biden, they've 'evolved' to use the Hillary word which means    devolved: they now celebrate abortion by expressing 'love' for it.  And they are not above using rank Orwellianisms to express their 'love.' "Abortion is health care" is the most outrageous of them.  

    Story here.


  • Left, Right, Sex, and Gender

    Top o' the Stack.

    Conservatives especially need to push back against linguistic wokery. And yet how many so-called conservatives continue to conflate sex and gender, race and skin color!  

    He who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate.

    The subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.

    Conservatives are long on talk, but short on conservation.

    Recommended article: Thomas D. Klingenstein and John Fonte, Woke Revolutionaries Versus Americanists.

    And just for fun, here is proof that James Carville — remember him? — is still a class act after all these years.


  • Who Could Deny that the Latin Mass is White-Supremacist?

    It is perfectly obvious, and here is the proof:

    1) Blacks don't know Latin
    2) What blacks don't know is white-supremacist; therefore
    3) Latin is white-supremacist.
    4) The Latin mass is in Latin; therefore:
    5) The Latin mass is white-supremacist.

    Quod erat demonstrandum! 

    Vide hic et hic. (Am I writing in 'code'?)


  • The Lewis Trilemma

    Does it prove the divinity of Jesus?

    I argue that it doesn't at the top o' the Stack. People who think otherwise, Peter Kreeft for example, bluster.

    People love to bluster.  Galen Strawson's rejection of theism is pure bluster.


  • The Ultimate Replacement

    I am not referring to the ethno-masochistic self-replacement of whites who have lost their 'mojo,' but the replacement of humanity by soulless robots. I speak not merely of the replacement of a uniquely clever species of land mammal. I speak of the erasure of spirit in the material world by the elimination of those spirits in animal bodies that we are. And to make the dark thought darker: there may be little or nothing we can do about it. Our technology has a life of its own and is re-creating us in its own image. What was created by us to serve us will master and then replace us.

    Filed under: Dark Thoughts


  • Remembering Harry Chapin

    Excellent live version  here by the late Harry Chapin (1942-1981). I heard it the other day on the radio while driving and was reminded of what a great writer and performer he was.  The last verses are particularly moving:

    And she walked away in silence,
    It's strange, how you never know,
    But we'd both gotten what we'd asked for,
    Such a long, long time ago.

    You see, she was gonna be an actress
    And I was gonna learn to fly.
    She took off to find the footlights,
    And I took off for the sky.
    And here, she's acting happy,
    Inside her handsome home.
    And me, I'm flying in my taxi,
    Taking tips, and getting stoned,
    I go flying so high, when I'm stoned.


  • Which is Seeming, which Being?

    In the vitality of the moment, in the pride of life, in the grip of surging lust, the trinkets that distract us seem so concrete, so compelling, and so real.  God and the soul seem by contrast like bloodless abstractions, mere thoughts, the impotent projections of weak minds incapable of facing 'reality' and of being satisfied with the only world there is.


  • Against Specialization

    "Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

    If so, there is no 'insect' like the hyper-specialized analytic philosopher. (See here for quotation and context.)

    The true philosopher is "a spectator of all time and existence," (Plato) and of everything sublunary and superlunary.

    Panoptics and synoptics are the optics of the true philosopher.  Spinoza the lens-grinder would agree. 


  • Abdication of Authority?

    Or something worse?

    Substack latest.


    2 responses to “Abdication of Authority?”

  • The Misuse of Superlatives (The Brokaw Fallacy) . . .

    . . . and two other fallacies. Top o' the Stack.


  • Academentia in excelsis

    It is fitting that a demented man should 'preside' over the decline and fall of our republic and in particular over the decline and fall of its once-great universities.  No one other than Joey B among American pols could better represent a nation in steep decline by every measure, a nation that has lost the will to defend its borders both on the ground and above it — I allude to the Chinese spy balloons — and to maintain domestic order within its borders. 

    Here:

    The Ohio State University is currently seeking a professor of “Philosophy of Race,” an area of expertise that includes “the epistemological significance of race or racism” and “race in the philosophy of science.” Its Department of Physics seeks a professor whose main focus is “issues relevant to educational equity.” And its Department of Anthropology recently sought an archaeologist whose work emphasizes “decolonization, feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and/or Indigenous ontologies.”

    The sheer destructive lunacy of the DEI agenda reaches its apogee in the Physics Department's quest for a professor whose main focus (!) is on educational equity.  'Equity' is Wokespeak for equality of outcome or result. So the search is on for a candidate who will dumb down physics to the extent necessary to insure that each student, regardless of race or ethnicity gets the same grade, presumably an 'A.' For of course any other result would be — wait for it — racist! We are all equal in every respect, hence any inequality of outcome as between, say, Asians as a group and blacks as a group, can only be explained by the Original Sin of systemic, institutional racism visited upon us by the Founders.  (This is why the monuments to them must of course be destroyed.) 

    And so physics, the least ideological of the natural sciences, must be ideologized, politicized, and racialized.

    The insanity of this is evident. But what explains it?  We like to think of university faculty and administrators as intelligent and sane people.  So what's the explanation? Perhaps it is like this.

    There is a hard-core of committed, strong-willed leftists who are positively evil and bent on destroying the USA and the West in general.  They enlist and manipulate a huge cadre of useful idiots and fellow-travelers who are not evil but are moral mediocrities who go along with the revolutionary vanguard for one or a combination of the following reasons: fear of losing their jobs and perquisites; laziness and inattention; a strong need to be liked and accepted; conformism; inability to think critically; misplaced white guilt; absorption in private life. 

    Essential to my explanation is the conservative conviction that evil is a reality with deep metaphysical roots, and that some of our fellow mortals are, in the main, agents of evil.  They are few in number but very powerful due to their ability to manipulate half-way decent, timorous and ovine, moral mediocrities. The latter are the useful idiots and fellow-travelers, latter-day 'pinkos' if you will. 

    Do you have a better explanation?  If so, I'd like to hear it.


    14 responses to “Academentia in excelsis

  • On ‘Illegal Alien’ and ‘Illegal Immigrant’

    Substack latest.

    The Republic is probably beyond saving at this late date. So why do I bother to write pieces that underscore what really ought to be obvious? One reason is selfish: I like to write and then re-read what I have written. But having taken the time to write something clean, coherent, and sensible, why should I hide my light  under a bushel? It is not impossible that a half-dozen readers will actually read what I have written and be led to think a bit more clearly and act a little more responsibly.  



Latest Comments


  1. https://www.thefp.com/p/charles-fain-lehman-dont-tolerate-disorder-charlie-kirk-iryna-zarutska?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

  2. Hey Bill, Got it now, thanks for clarifying. I hope you have a nice Sunday. May God bless you!

  3. Vini, Good comments. Your command of the English language is impressive. In my penultimate paragraph I wrote, “Hence their hatred…

  4. Just a little correction, since I wrote somewhat hastily. I meant to say enemies of the truth (not from the…

  5. You touched on very, very important points, Bill. First, I agree that people nowadays simply want to believe whatever the…

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