Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
You decide. If you want my opinion, Dementocrat 'paranoia' is but a manifestation of TDS. Never forget: our political enemies are ever at work bringing Trump's 'inner Hitler' to light.
Related: No Entity without Identity
Addendum (8/22): Trump's One-Week D. C. Clean-Up. Does it show that the Dems are destroying their cities by choice? It may be like this: in their race-delusionality, they think that any crackdown on crime would be racist, and their greatest fear is to be called racists.
"We will not open or operate retail stores in California." (Marcus Lemonis, Bed, Bath, and Beyond)
Even Scarborough sees through the clown.
Now if you really want to learn something, please pay close attention to this nine minute video by Victor Davis Hanson entitled Gavin Newsom's 250 Mil Redistricting Power Grab.
The shape of things to come. Will human surgeons be out of a job?
"This advancement moves us from robots that can execute specific surgical tasks to robots that truly understand surgical procedures." Axel Krieger, Johns Hopkins medical roboticist.
Truly understand?
Julian Green, Diary 1928-1957, entry of 30 December 1940, p. 104:
Does our body never weary of desiring the same things? [. . .] There are only two types of humanity . . . the mystic and the profligate, because both fly to extremes , searching, each is his own way, for the absolute; but, of the two, the profligate is to my mind the most [more] mysterious, for he never tires of the only dish served up to him by his appetite and on which he banquets each times as though he had never tasted it before. Probably because of this, I have always had a tendency to consider an immoderate craving for pleasure as an accepted form of madness.
Only two types of humanity? No, but two types. Man is made for the Absolute, and some of us seek it. Mysticism and profligacy are two ways of seeking it. Eschewing the phony and conventional, some of us strive after the really real, τὸ ὄντως ὄν. Some by world-flight, others by immersion in sensual indulgence. An enlightened upward and a deluded downward seeking. The solid and stolid bourgeois type will consider both types of seekers mad. But only those who seek the really real in the pleasures of the flesh are truly mad. They are bound for a hell of their own devising as I suggest in A Theory of Hell. Excerpt:
To be in hell is to be in a perpetual state of enslavement to one's vices, knowing that one is enslaved, unable to derive genuine satisfaction from them, unable to get free, and knowing that there is true happiness that will remain forever out of reach. Hell would then be not as a state of pain but one of endless unsatisfying and unsatisfied pleasure. A state of unending gluttony for example, or of ceaseless sexual promiscuity. A state of permanent entrapment in a fool's paradise — think of an infernal counterpart of Las Vegas — in which one is constantly lusting after food and drink and money and sex, but is never satisfied. On fire with the fire of desire, endless and unfulfilled, but with the clear understanding that one is indeed a fool, and entrapped, and cut off permanently from a genuine happiness that one knows exists but will never experience.
Top o' the Stack.
Opinions differ.
On a podcast last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D–NY, claimed, “I walk around all the time. I wake up early in the morning … And I feel perfectly safe.” He dismissed Republican concerns about safety as “full of it,” but, of course, Schumer doesn’t go anywhere without his security detail. In a similar vein, D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen called the federalization of law enforcement “unnecessary, unwarranted,” and the D.C. Council emphasized that crime rates are at “the lowest rates we’ve seen in 30 years.”
John Lott goes on to argue that "D.C.’s murder rate ran 169 percent higher than Louisiana’s, the deadliest state, and an astonishing 523 percent higher than that of the average state."
Lott is one of those who invariably talks sense in stark contrast to our political enemies.
The Dems are a contemptible bunch. I could easily list ten reasons. Two near the top are their breathtaking mendacity and their casual attitude toward criminality. And they lie about both.
The Dems are always going on about 'our democracy,' their noble defense of it, and the Republicans' nefarious assault upon it. But they never tell us what they mean by 'democracy.' One is left to speculate. Here is David Brooks commenting on the recent gerrymandering/redistricting contretemps:
I understand the argument. But let's do a little ethical experiment here. You're in World War I. The Germans use mustard gas on civilians, and it helps them. Do you then decide, 'Okay, we're going to use mustard gas on civilians?' What Trump ordered Abbott to do in Texas is mustard gas on our democracy. (emphasis added)
One gets the distinct impression that for Democrats, 'democracy' means our party, the Democrat party. Accordingly, to defend and preserve democracy is to defend, preserve, and enhance the power of the Democrat party by any and all means necessary including gerrymandering. After all, they are (in their own eyes) wonderful people; so whatever they do must be wonderful too. But when we do unto them what they have long done unto us, we are despicable 'fascists' out to destroy 'democracy.'
'Fascist' is the pejorative counterpart of the Dem's honorific 'democracy.' 'Fascist' is the Left's favorite F-word, although, thanks to Hunter Biden and others, the F-word itself may be coming to occupy the top slot in the depredatory Left's deprecatory lingo. Hunter and the benighted Beto O'Rourke seem incapable these days of uttering a sentence free of F-bomb ornamentation.
I should think that both the pejorative and the honorific, as used by the Dems, ought to enter retirement. For they know too little history to know what 'fascist' means, and their actions show that there is little that is democratic about them. Or do you think the coup against Joe Biden and his replacement on the 2024 Dem ticket by Kamala Harris was a democratic action? Quite the contrary!
The subversion of language is the mother of all subversion. The contemporary Dems are a pack of subversives out to destroy our republic. And yes, it is a republic, not a democracy , even when the word is used responsibly. It is a constitutionally-based republic and is democratic only to the extent that the people have a say in who shall represent them.
'Journo' is my term of disapprobation-unto-contempt for liberal-left journalists. It is on a par with 'shyster' as a term of abuse for a certain sort of lawyer. Dig this from today's news:
NEW YORK (AP) — A club shooting in the New York City borough of Brooklyn early Sunday morning has left three people dead and nine others wounded in a year of record-low gun violence in the city.
NYC is quite the craphole these days, both above and under ground, and she seems bent on becoming the cesspool of the nation. Madman Mamdani the Islamo-commie-anti-semite, has a good shot at the mayoralty, I am told.
I've often wondered about the etymology of 'shyster.' From German scheissen, to shit? That would fit well with the old joke, "What is the difference between a lawyer and a bucket of shit?' "The bucket." I am also put in mind of scheusslich: hideous, atrocious, abominable. Turning to the 'shyster' entry in my Webster's, I read, "prob. fr. Scheuster fl. 1840 Am. attorney frequently rebuked in a New York court for pettifoggery."
According to Robert Hendrickson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, p. 659:
Shyster, an American slang term for a shady disreputable lawyer, is first recorded in 1846. Various authorities list a real New York advocate as a possible source, but this theory has been disproved by Professor Gerald L. Cohen of the University of Missouri-Rolla, whose long paper on the etymology I had the pleasure of reading. Shakespeare's moneylender Shylock has also been suggested, as has a racetrack form of the word shy, i.e., to be shy money when betting. Some authorities trace shyster to the German Scheisse, "excrement," possibly through the word shicir, "a worthless person," but there is no absolute proof for any theory.
A little further research reveals that Professor Cohen's "long paper" is in fact a short book of 124 pages published in 1982 by Verlag Peter Lang. See here for a review. Cohen argues that the eponymous derivation from 'Scheuster' that I just cited from Webster's is a pseudo-etymology. 'Shyster' no more derives from 'Scheuster' than 'condom' from the fictious Dr. Condom. Nor does it come from 'Shylock.' It turns out my hunch was right. 'Shyster' is from the German Scheisser, one who defecates.
The estimable and erudite Dr. Michael Gilleland, self-styled antediluvian, bibliomaniac, and curmudgeon, who possesses an uncommonly lively interest in matters scatological, should find all of this interesting. I see that the Arizona State University library has a copy of Gerald Leonard Cohen's Origin of the Term "Shyster." Within a few days it should be in my hands.
I'm a 'sixties guy but I can relate to some of the 'seventies stuff. When the 'seventies rolled around I began tuning out popular music and began giving myself an education in classical music, the original 'long-haired' music. Classical, however, with its dynamic variations, is no good for the road, leastways not in the Jeeps I drive. So, it's popular music for purposes of the road and Saturday night nostalgia.
Bellamy Brothers, Let Your Love Flow
Jackson Browne, Running on Empty
Eagles, Hotel California
Abba, Fernando
Gerry Rafferty, Baker Street
Warren Zevon, Carmelita
YouTuber interpretation:
After listening to this song for a while, I think that Carmelita is the heroin itself. Warren talks about being with "her in Ensenada" but he's alone in Echo Park playing "solitaire". Shooting heroin makes him feel like he's on the beach in Mexico with a woman that he loves. The song itself is a great representation of what addiction does. He knows that it's not good for him but he has given up on trying to get better and just looks towards "Carmelita" to hold him tighter.
Billy Joel, Piano Man
Substack latest on the aporetics of evil.
Today I preach upon a text from Karl Jaspers wherein he comments on St. Augustine (Plato and Augustine, ed. Arendt, tr. Mannheim, Harcourt 1962, p. 110):
In interminable discussions, men have tried to sharpen and clarify this contradiction: on the one hand, evil is a mere clouding of the good, a shadow, a deficiency; on the other hand, it is an enormously effective power. But no one has succeeded in resolving it.
The problem is genuine, the problem is humanly important, and yet it gives every indication of being intractable. Jaspers is right: no one has ever solved it. To sharpen the contradiction:
1) Evil is privatio boni: nothing independently real, but a mere lack of good, parasitic upon the good. It has no positive entitative status.
2) Evil is not a mere lack of good, but an enormously effective power in its own right. It has a positive entitative status.
A tough nut to crack, an aporetic dyad, each limb of which makes a very serious claim on our attention. And yet the limbs cannot both be true. Philosophy is its problems, and when a problem is expressed as an aporetic polyad, then I say it is in canonical form.
Under nine minutes. Hanson argues that the Democrats are destroying democracy to destroy President Donald Trump. Do your bit and propagate this short video clip. This is a war. Speak out, gear up, get ready. The ass you save may be your own.
Is a home invader an asylum seeker? Only in very rare cases. So why are people who immigrate illegally called asylum seekers? A few are but most are not. What we have here, once again, is the characteristic 'progressive' abuse of language. You should have learned by now that no word or phrase is safe around a leftist. Conservatives are not against asylum; they are against the abuse of asylum.
At the same time that so-called progressives abuse 'asylum,' they also abuse 'xenophobic' when they apply this term to those of us who stand for the rule of law. You are one dumb conservative if you acquiesce in the Left's abuse of language.
If you are a conservative, don't talk like a 'liberal.'
He who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate.
This is a good article! Its actual title leaves something to be desired.
1) To be able to maintain that AI systems are literally conscious in the way we are, conscious states must be multiply realizable. Consider a cognitive state such as knowing that 7 is a prime number. That state is realizable in the wetware of human brains. The question is whether the same type of state could be realized in the hardware of a computing machine. Keep in mind the type-token distinction. The realization of the state in question (knowing that 7 is prime) is its tokening in brain matter in the one instance, in silica-based matter in the other. This is not possible without multiple realizability of one and the same type of mental state.
2) Conscious states (mental states) are multiply realizable only if functionalism is true. This is obvious, is it not?
3) Functionalism is incoherent.
Therefore:
4) AI systems cannot be literally conscious in the way we are.
That's the argument. The premise that needs defending is (3). So let's get to it.
Suppose Socrates Jones is in some such state as that of perceiving a tree. The state is classifiable as mental as opposed to a physical state like that of his lying beneath a tree. What makes a mental state mental? That is the question.
The functionalist answer is that what makes a mental state mental is just the causal role it plays in mediating between the sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and other internal states of the subject in question. The idea is not the banality that mental states typically (or even always) have causes and effects, but that it is causal role occupancy, nothing more and nothing less, that constitutes the mentality of a mental state. The intrinsic nature of what plays the role is relevant only to its fitness for instantiating mental causal roles, but not at all relevant to its being a mental state.
Consider a piston in an engine. You can't make a piston out of chewing gum, but being made of steel is no part of what makes a piston a piston. A piston is what it does within the 'economy' of the engine. Similarly, on functionalism, a mental state is what it does. This allows, but does not entail, that a mental state be a brain or CNS state. It also allows, but does not entail, that a mental state be a state of a computing machine.
To illustrate, suppose my cat Zeno and I are startled out of our respective reveries by a loud noise at time t. Given the differences between human and feline brains, presumably man and cat are not in type-identical brain states at t. (One of the motivations for functionalism was the breakdown of the old type-type identity theory of Herbert Feigl, U. T. Place. J. J. C. Smart, et al.) Yet both man and cat are startled: both are in some sense in the same mental state, even though the states they are in are neither token- nor type-identical. The functionalist will hold that we are in functionally the same mental state in virtue of the fact that Zeno's brain state plays the same role in him as my brain state plays in me. It does the same mediatorial job vis-à-vis sensory inputs, other internal states, and behavioral outputs in me as the cat's brain state does in him.
On functionalism, then, the mentality of the mental is wholly relational. And as David Armstrong points out, "If the essence of the mental is purely relational, purely a matter of what causal role is played, then the logical possibility remains that whatever in fact plays the causal role is not material." This implies that "Mental states might be states of a spiritual substance." Thus the very feature of functionalism that allows mentality to be realized in computers and nonhuman brains generally, also allows it to be realized in spiritual substances if there are any.
Whether this latitudinarianism is thought to be good or bad, functionalism is a monumentally implausible theory of mind. There are the technical objections that have spawned a pelagic literature: absent qualia, inverted qualia, the 'Chinese nation,' etc. Thrusting these aside, I go for the throat, Searle-style.
Functionalism is threatened by a fundamental incoherence. The theory states that what makes a state mental is nothing intrinsic to the state, but purely relational: a matter of its causes and effects. In us, these happen to be neural. (I am assuming physicalism for the time being.) Now every mental state is a neural state, but not every neural state is a mental state. So the distinction between mental and nonmental neural states must be accounted for in terms of a distinction between two different sets of causes and effects, those that contribute to mentality and those that do not. But how make this distinction? How do the causes/effects of mental neural events differ from the causes/effects of nonmental neural events? Equivalently, how do psychologically salient input/output events differ from those that lack such salience?
Suppose the display on my monitor is too bright for comfort and I decide to do something about it. Why is it that photons entering my retina are psychologically salient inputs but those striking the back of my head are not? Why is it that the moving of my hand to to adjust the brightness and contrast controls is a salient output event, while unnoticed perspiration is not?
One may be tempted to say that the psychologically salient inputs are those that contribute to the production of the uncomfortable glare sensation, and the psychologically salient outputs are those that manifest the concomitant intention to make an adjustment. But then the salient input/output events are being picked out by reference to mental events taken precisely NOT as causal role occupants, but as exhibiting intrinsic features that are neither causal nor neural: the glare quale has an intrinsic nature that cannot be resolved into relations to other items, and cannot be identified with any brain state. The functionalist would then be invoking the very thing he is at pains to deny, namely, mental events as having more than neural and causal features.
Clearly, one moves in a circle of embarrassingly short diameter if one says: (i) mental events are mental because of the mental causal roles they play; and (ii) mental causal roles are those whose occupants are mental events.
The failure of functionalism is particularly evident in the case of qualia. Examples of qualia: felt pain, a twinge of nostalgia, the smell of burnt garlic, the taste of avocado. Is it plausible to say that such qualia can be exhaustively factored into a neural component and a causal/functional component? It is the exact opposite of plausible. It is not as loony as the eliminativist denial of qualia, but it is close. The intrinsic nature of qualitative mental states is essential to them. It is that intrinsic qualitative nature that dooms functionalism.
Therefore
4) It cannot be maintained with truth that AI systems are literally conscious in the way we are. Talk of computers knowing this or that is metaphorical.
Naomi Wolf feels
. . . guilty because my reaction to Mamdani is so personally aversive.
It is aversive because of the lie-and-deception factor.
Mamdani, as I will reveal, is a nepo son dressed as a communist — but a communist takeover of NYC is not what really motivates this man, not what is really behind this campaign.
Apart from the full-spectrum communist agenda which Mamdani superficially offers, one reason for my sense of personal queasiness when I consider this candidate in various settings is because I know guys like this. Though I am of another generation, some things do not change.
I went to school with guys like this. They are Jaspers.
Filed under: Hustlers, Frauds, Mountebanks
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