I never thought I could say this.

This makes me absolutely proud to be an American. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing special about America per se that makes me proud to be among its members. What I mean is that, by Divine fiat or fortuitous accident, we might fail to ever get Human Nature and Human Rights properly articulated and properly protected, but the very idea of them is something we never let die. What does that get us? Everything... or at least the possibility thereof.

For how could we even begin to move forward if we didn't already know that there's such thing as a forward?

And from Chomsky, no less! Please notice how unabashed he is about using words like "Human Nature" and "Justice". I know he's probably no Natural Law theorist, but if he were, his response to Foucoult wouldn't be jot or tittle different than it is.

Please watch.

off the cuff.

Suppose:
(1) All propositions are sentences.
(2) All sentences are linguistic (i.e., in language).
(3) All representations must represent non-representations.
Why (3)? Because:
(4) (premise for (3)): There cannot be a representation without that which is represented,
and,
(5) (premise for (3)): whatever is represented is not itself a representation.

Suppose:
(6) All language is representational.
by (6),
(7) (6) represents itself.
by (7) and (3),
(8) (6) is not a representation.
Therefore,
(9) (6) is false.

I wanted this to be a reductio of (1). I am somewhat dubious about (3).

Look closely...

Poussin's The Choice of Hercules [Between Virtue and Vice].  

Here's Virtue herself.  She's beautiful. 

desiderata for a theory of personal identity. pt. 1

First-person pronouns.

 

Any theory of personal identity, it seems, should account for our prephilosophical intuition that the “I” refers to or is about one’s self.  More specifically, it should explain how it is possible that when I was twelve years old and said “I am twelve years old”, I referred to or predicated of the self-same subject that I refer to when I now say “I am twenty eight years old.”  Why should this be a desideratum for our theory?  Because denying that the “I” refers to the same object in both propositions is tantamount to saying that the person who said, “I am twelve years old” is a different self than the person who now says “I am twenty-eight years old”, which is absurd.

Conveniently, this desideratum rules out three formidable accounts:  Hume’s, Wittgenstein’s, and Parfit’s.  It also rules out other not-so formidable accounts: perhaps Heidegger’s and Sartre’s, and on some accounts, Husserl’s. So, so much for all of these folk. 

A tangled web I've weaved.

Above is a web of my current research interests.  The web illustrates both the interrelatedness of many of my interests, as well as how certain foci affect others.  I'd say the heart of my research interest is personal identity.  But this subject, as you can see, depends upon more general questions about individuation and identity, which are themselves related to general issues in modality.  This shows, in part, why my interest in personal identity led me to modality and the nature of propositions.

The arrows are indicative of either (a) subcategory or (b) primary interest only within a category, or (c) the intersection of categories.  E.g.,  (a) modality is a subcategory of metaphysics; (b) the subcategory of propositions qua propositions is too broad to be under modality and possible worlds, but my interest in the nature of propositions tend to be concentrated in modal contexts; and (c) modal epist. and moral responsibility are at the intersections of distinct categories. 

Also, this web reveals some of my prejudices.  For instance, I think that Axiology is a subdivision of Metaphysics, but Epistemology is not.  But, as indicated by Epistemology's "lower than Metaphysics" status, I think the mode of knowing (or the way of knowing) follows from what (quid) is known--viz., I think metaphysics is prior to epistemology in a substantive sense. 

Oh, the irony.*

I'm sure occupying a disabled persons' parking spot was absolutely necessary to get coffee at 7-eleven.

*the photograph in this post depicting a Los Angeles Parking Enforcement vehicle parking in a disabled persons' parking spot cannot be copied, replicated, downloaded, saved to a drive, posted, altered, disseminated, sold, or purchased, without the expressed written consent of Derek von Barandy. All applicable copyrights are reserved by Derek von Barandy.

Some thoughts on the possibility of a just revolution in Iran.

On Locke’s view, any government that systematically disregards or violates the unalienable rights of the People can be justly overthrown. The Iranian Revolutionary [sic] Republic [sic] can easily be construed as a state that does violate the rights of its People. Firstly, it is fundamentally undemocratic (not something bad per se, but opens the possibility of unrepresented and hence illegitimate laws), women do not have suffrage, there is hardly any freedom of the press and/or political dissent, and there is little room for freedom of conscience (religion).

But things aren’t so simple. Despite the widespread protests as of late, the vast majority of Iranians don’t think any of the rights I just mentioned are, in fact, inalienable rights. Perhaps there is a strong minority who wish to see such rights protected and acknowledged by their government, but I doubt that the majority of people in Iran think women have the right to vote, or that people should be free to express their political views, or to practice whichever religion they wish. Thus, if there were to be a revolution, it would be an undemocratic one. And further, if the minority were to carry out a successful revolution, they would end up enforcing the protection of rights that the majority of Iranians either don’t want or don’t think they should have.

So we have a situation where the majority of the People’s will is not frustrated, but a strong minority who probably think their rights are being violated. Is there room for any sort of compromise?